


Who Killed Jenny Schecter?

by OGSalli



Series: A Shane and Carmen novel [1]
Category: L-Word, Mature - Fandom, Mystery - Fandom, f/f - Fandom, gen - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Gen, Multi, the L-word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:42:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 223,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24500251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OGSalli/pseuds/OGSalli
Summary: The ending you always wantedThe ending you always deservedA 34-chapter murder mystery that solves the murder of Jenny Schecter at the conclusion of Season 6 of "The L-Word."
Relationships: Carmen Morales, Jenny Schecter - Relationship, Lauren Hancock, Shane McCutcheon - Relationship
Series: A Shane and Carmen novel [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770112
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	1. Orange Is the New Alice

The Ending You Waited For.

The Ending You Deserved.

**Who Killed Jenny?**

A Shane and Carmen Novel

by Alice Pieszecki and O. G. Salli

Based on the famous _L-Word_ series characters

**Chapter 1 Orange Is the New Alice**

"McCutcheon!"

They called it "The Farm," but it was just a prison with a touchy-feely nickname, and at this touchy-feely prison they called the guards "correction officers," COs for short, which was a better term than the old one from generations ago, which was "screws." "Screw" was an unfortunate nickname for a guard at a woman's prison, so they didn't use it. And they didn’t always call them prisons any more, they called them "correctional facilities," which was more politically correct and euphemistic than "penitentiaries." This one, though, was called Humboldt State Farm and Prison for Women. “Farm” was a cute marketing touch, murderers growing avocados and carrots. As far as Shane McCutcheon was concerned, a prison was a prison was a prison, even a women’s prison. Not many inmates came out "corrected," and very few were "penitent" before, during or after they were inside one. Shane didn't like being in a prison. Not one little bit.

The CO who called Shane's name from the clipboard in his hand was a man, a tall dude with blue eyes. He looked like a clean-shaven biker, and his name badge identified him as Perry comma Mark. His attitude was friendlier than Shane had expected. She got up and went to the door where he stood, and passed through while he held it for her. Then, while she waited, he locked it behind them from a big ring of keys. He wasn't carrying a gun, or even a nightstick. He was big enough he didn't need to.

Perry comma Mark didn't say anything more, but walked down the hall to another door, and unlocked it. Like the first door, it had a pane of bulletproof glass with a grid of reinforcing wire in it. He held it open for Shane, who walked through. Again, he followed, locking the door behind them. That's all they did in this place, walk down corridors and hallways, unlocking and locking doors as they went.

As far as prisons went, this one wasn't quite as bad as most people's nightmares, but it was by no means pleasant. It was, on its best days, "neutral." Bland institutional paint on the walls. Bland, boring linoleum floors. Faint odor of some industrial cleaner/disinfectant. COs everywhere, significantly more than half of them women, since this was, after all, a women's prison, and there was never a moment when someone wasn't watching you. There were surveillance cameras mounted high up in the corridor corners, looking this way and that, and no one had bothered to try to conceal them. There were cameras in the waiting areas. Cameras in the yards. And Shane knew that somewhere there was a room with a bank of monitors, and people sitting there watching the monitors. Maybe in the low-security areas it was better, but this was the part of the prison where they kept the baddest of the bad-ass bad girls, murderesses and drug queenpins, the incorrigibles, the hard cases. Smile, girls, you’re on uncandid camera.

The CO unlocked a door and let Shane enter the next room, which was the visitation room. It was divided in half by a wall that was solid below and glass above. It was also divided into small sections with side panels for what was laughingly called “privacy.” There was a table top on each side, and on each side a telephone without a dial. There was one metal chair in each visitation space, and there were a total of five such cubicles. A woman in her late forties sat in the cubicle at the far end, talking to a 20-something woman who might have been her daughter on the other side of the glass.

"Take a seat," the CO said, and left the room. Shane waited a beat and then heard the lock click behind her. She sighed, and looked around the room. She wanted a cigarette. No, make that a joint. She sat down in the second cubicle and waited.

After a minute a door on the other side of the glass partition opened, and a CO came in, followed a second later by Alice Pieszecki. Alice walked to her side of the partition opposite Shane, sat down in the chair, picked up the telephone, and burst into tears. The phone fell to the tabletop. She held her hands over her face, crying silently, her shoulders shaking.

"Alice, Alice," Shane said from her side of the glass, but of course Alice couldn't hear her. Shane was very close to tears herself. "Hey, come on, Alice," she said gently. She held the phone up to her ear, waiting. She put her free hand up to the glass, palm pressed against it, wanting Alice to do the same.

Alice slowly dropped her hands and pulled herself together. She mopped her face, half smiling through the tears. When she was able, she held her palm up to the glass against Shane's, picked up the phone, and said, "Hey."

"Hey," Shane responded.

"Ya know, in all this time, all these months, this is the very first time I lost it," Alice said.

"It's okay," Shane said softly. "You don't have to apologize."

"I know," Alice said. "I wasn't apologizing. I was just ... you know ... just saying."

"I know. We've all been worried about you. Everybody said to say hello, and that they all love you."

Alice smiled. "Tell them all I said 'Hey.'"

"I will." Shane said. "Is there anything you need? Anything at all? Just name it."

"I guess some clothes. Socks and sweatshirts and stuff. There's a list they give you, stuff you can have. A cake with a file in it."

"I'll get the list," Shane said.

"Cigarettes," Alice said. "They use them as money in here."

"Okay."

"Hey, you haven't complimented me on my outfit. I wore it just for you."

Alice was wearing an orange jumpsuit provided by the prison. There was a white patch stitched over the left breast that said "Humboldt State Farm and Women's Prison," and below it in much larger letters her prisoner number, 92530.

"It's fab, Alice," Shane said into the phone. "It was the first thing I noticed. I think the color does wonders for you."

"You don't think it's a little brash?"

"Well, maybe a little over the top, yes. It makes a statement. But the shape and fit are just, well, really hard to describe."

"I think 'baggy,' 'shapeless' and 'unflattering' say it all."

"I can't disagree."

"But it's comfortable. You can lounge around in it all day. And you don't need to change for dinner."

"No, I guess not."

"They could make a TV prison show about it. Put lots of lesbians in it."

"Absolutely. I'd watch."

"You'd watch anything with lesbians in it. I know I would."

"That's true. How bad's the food?"

"It's tolerable. I don't think managing my weight is going to be an issue."

"No."

Alice heaved a sigh. "Oh, Shane."

"I'm so sorry," Shane said. "We were all so shocked. We couldn't believe it."

"So what's the consensus?"

Shane smiled, sadly. "Half of us think you're delusional, you lost your mind. Maybe a bump on the head, or a brain tumor, or post-traumatic whatsy-whatsis. The other half of us think you're covering up for somebody, but we don't know who or why. Not one of us thinks you did it. Not one. I mean, there's not even anybody who says, 'Well, maybe, under the right circumstances ... .'"

"They're all sweet," Alice said. "I guess I don't project as homicidal material. So which half were you in?"

"Me? I guess I'm in the delusional camp. When I heard you confessed, I was just, like ... I dunno. I was stunned. It made no sense."

"Well, like Ahnold said, ‘It’s not a tumah.’ Who told you I had confessed?"

"The detective. What's-her-name, the sergeant. The one in charge."

"Marybeth Duffy."

"Yeah, her. And she seemed really pissed."

Alice laughed quietly to herself. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Why is that funny?"

Alice looked up. "Sure--" she looked around the room as if to see if anyone was listening. In theory, the visitation room was not supposed to be bugged, but everyone inside always assumed someone was always listening. It was a cardinal belief in prison life. "--of course she was pissed. I threw her entire investigation into the dumper. Everything came to a halt."

Shane's face clouded over. She normally took a lot of time -- sometimes almost geologic time -- processing things. But she'd known Alice for more than a decade. Alice was her co-best friend through all the crazy years of trauma and drama and heartaches and loss, and Shane had always been able to read her, even through all the thousands of surface quirks and dodges and baggage, all the high maintenance that Alice always trailed in her wake. That said, Shane had always known Alice's heart, just as Alice had just about always known Shane's. Sisters from different misters. BFFs, carved in stone.

"I don't get it," Shane finally said, because she didn't.

"C'mon, Shane," Alice said, sitting back with a sly look on her face.

"C'mon what?"

"Yeah, okay, whatever. I get it," Alice said.

"Alice, I have no idea what we're talking about. I swear to God. Help me out here."

Alice looked down at her hands as her fingers played with each other. "You know. Who killed Jenny. That's what I mean."

"You know who killed Jenny?"

"Shane, c'mon," Alice said, no longer smirking.

"I swear I have no fucking idea what you're saying."

"Shane, it's okay. I confessed. It's okay, okay? We're cool."

"Are you saying you really _did_ kill her?"

"Shaaaaaaane!" Alice almost screamed, but keeping her voice low. "No, you idiot! Of course I didn't! Christ! You of all people KNOW I didn't kill her! That's what I'm saying!"

"I don't _know_ what you're saying!"

"Shane, it's okay, I'm never gonna rat you out, you don't--"

"Rat me out? Alice, what the fuck are you talking about? You think _I_ killed her?"

"Shhhhh, be careful. Somebody's probably monitoring us."

"Alice! I don't give a fuck who's monitoring anything! What are you saying? You think _I_ killed Jenny and you confessed to cover up for me? Jesus fuck!" Shane jumped up from her chair and walked in a circle around the room, pulling at her hair in frustration. She ran back to the chair and grabbed up the phone. "Alice--"

"Shane! Jeez, don't go crazy, they'll come in here and throw you out or lock you up! We're in a fucking prison, Shane!"

"I know where the fuck we are, Alice." Shane put her forehead in her left hand like she had the world's worst migraine. Christ, this was crazy. Alice thought SHE was the one who killed Jenny, and for God only knows what deranged reason had confessed to keep Shane out of jail. This was a ton of stuff to process, and the roaring noise in Shane's head was huge. Epic. It was like sticking your head inside a jet engine.

"Alice," she finally said, "I swear to you I didn't kill Jenny. Yes, I was pissed at her, and yes, I wanted to strangle her, the thieving, lying, conniving little bitch. And yes, if she'd walked into Bette's living room right then I might well have strangled her with my bare hands. But we were ALL pissed at her, even you. _All_ of us wanted to throttle her that particular night. But I swear to you ... ." She trailed off, emotionally drained and not knowing where to go from here.

Alice had a new and different look on her face, a kind of shock of her own. It was the realization that she had confessed to shield Shane -- who hadn't done it.

Shane looked up and saw Alice's face on the other side of the glass. She'd been processing like crazy, and now some of the solutions were starting to tumble out of her brain.

"No ... Alice ... no ... ." She stared. "Alice, please tell me you didn't confess to help me because you thought I did it."

The look on Alice's face was the answer.

"I don't believe it," Shane whispered into the phone, massaging her forehead. Alice made an Alice face, funny and "d'oh!" and mock exasperated. "You were willing to go to jail for me? To be convicted of Jenny's murder and spend your life in some fucking prison ... just to protect me?"

"Well ... yeah," Alice finally admitted. "Ya know, I figured--"

"Figured what?"

"I figured, that, uh, you did it, and that if they pinned it on you, they'd convict you ... you know, 'cause you were guilty, and all ... and then they'd send you to jail, and I didn't think you could handle that. Prison would eat you up."

"Why would it eat me up?"

"What, are you kidding? Shane, you wouldn't last 48 hours in here."

"I wouldn't?"

"Shit no! Shane, you're too much a free spirit, a free, wild, untamed ... ummm ... some kind of bird, maybe. Like Carmen always said, you know how she was about birds. Anyway, you'd go nuts in here. And some bulldyke would try to make you her bitch, and, well, frankly, I don't see you surviving as somebody's bitch, ya know? You'd get all uppity and in her face, you know how you are, and then she'd have to kill you, and then you'd be dead, and I didn't want you to get shanked in here by some pissed-off butch with a toothbrush shiv just because you wouldn't be somebody's bitch."

Shane didn't know what to say. She just looked at Alice, slowly shaking her head. Alice made another face. "Shane, you like to come off as all tough and street-smart and don't mess with my shit and all, but everybody who knows you ... ." She stopped.

"Knows me what?"

Alice paused. "Knows that inside, you ... you're pretty vulnerable, and, you know, hurt, and gentle, and not mean-spirited, and very forgiving, and, and ... oh, fuck, Shane, you're too nice. You're too soft inside. You even let Jenny, of all people, push you around. You got all that stuff in your head, and it takes you forever to process stuff, like you always admit, and in here ya gotta be tough and quick and think fast on your feet 'cause this is a dangerous place. And it would eat you up and spit you out."

"Alice, that's the craziest thing I ever heard."

"Yeah, well."

"But thank you. Thank you for wanting to save my life. I don't think anyone's ever done anything like that for me before."

Alice shrugged and looked down. "We go back a long way. We go all the way back to Harvey's funeral. And anyway, that was just the one thing."

"One thing? I don't understand."

But Alice had gone too far and had made a mistake.

"Uh, nothing. Never mind. Forget I said it."

"Alice, tell me. What other thing."

Alice looked away. "Umm ... I thought ... maybe ... you know ... if I confessed to killing Jenny ... then maybe ... "

"Maybe what? Jesus, Alice, just tell me!"

"That you'd come forward and confess. That you would finally see how important this was, and that ... uh ... you couldn't let me, your best friend, take the fall for you."

"But ... but ... but ... I didn't kill her! So why would I come forth and confess to something I didn't do?"

Alice made yet another exasperated "D'oh!" face. "Well, yeah, NOW that's a good question, but back then, a few months ago, it seemed ... um ... "

"Back when you thought I did it."

"Well ... yeah. But you remember how it was, they wouldn’t let any of us talk to each other. We couldn’t work anything out."

Shane sat back in the chair and arched head back, looking up at the ceiling. "I don't believe this."

Alice looked down. "And then, see, after you stood up and said, 'No, she didn't do it, I did it, I killed Jenny,' then maybe Tina would stand up and say, 'No, they didn't kill Jenny, I killed Jenny.' Because Tina was really, really pissed at her, too, 'cause she stole the film to Tina's movie. Tina was my second choice. But what Tina was mad about was basically just a movie, whereas you and Jenny, well, that was all about Jenny fucking with your love life, Molly, your ex-girlfriend, that was more serious than some movie. That’s why I thought it was you instead of Tina. But if it had been Tina, then Bette would stand up to protect her, and say, 'No, Tina didn't kill Jenny, I did.' And then around the room, Helena, and Kit, until everybody had given them a confession. Like in _Spartacus_."

"Spartacus? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Didn't you ever see _Spartacus_? The movie? Kirk Douglas? And the Romans have captured them all and they want to know which one is Spartacus, because they’re gonna literally crucify him, and Tony Curtis stands up and says, 'I’m Spartacus!' And then another gladiator stands up and says he's Spartacus, and soon they're all standing up claiming to be Spartacus. They all confess and lie to protect the real Spartacus."

Shane cradled her head in her hands. This was unbelievable. Only Alice could come up with such an idiotic idea ... and make it seem halfway plausible. Okay, not halfway. But maybe just a little bit plausible. Two percent.

Jesus. What were they going to do?

Shane looked up. "Is there anything more?"

Alice looked guilty.

"Tell me."

"Well ... I just thought ... you know how I am ... this would be an adventure. You know. Alice Pieszecki goes to the Big House. It would be cool. I could get a radio show and maybe broadcast from prison here. Maybe write a screenplay. I mean, I didn't think I'd be here forever. And that part was right, they only gave me twelve years, and with good behavior I could be out in seven, and my book or movie treatment would be done by then, and there would be all these 'Free Alice!' protesters trying to spring me, and a legal defense fund, Lezzies for Justice or something."

Shane just looked at her. "Oh, Alice."

"Yeah, I know. I'm pathetic. Well, I am what I am. What's a little martyrdom on my resume?"

"Didn't you tell any of this to your lawyer?"

"Well, not at first, no. But just before the trial started, I told him my confession was false, and that I was protecting you."

"And what did he say?"

"You mean right after he gave birth to a giant fucking cow and had a shit-fit and did a major hissy all over me? What did he say? After he calmed down and stopped cursing and pulling his own hair out, he said we could try to tell that story to the district attorney, and after the DA laughed himself silly we could plead not guilty and get our asses kicked and instead of fifteen years I could get life instead. So, long story short, I was pretty much stuck with my own fake confession, and we could try to plea bargain it down as low as we could. I mean, hey, seven years for a manslaughter, that’s not bad, you know? I thought about asking him if we could change it to, you know, womanslaughter, or even lezslaughter, but he really wasn’t in the mood. So anyway, that's what we did. And here I am."

Alice looked up at Shane, but Shane's mind was elsewhere. "Alice, we gotta get you out of here."

"I don't think they like it when you try to break people out of jail in this state, Shane."

"I mean it, we gotta get you out. You're innocent. But what I was thinking was the only way to do it was to catch the real murderer."

"Oh. Well, yeah, there is that. Good plan. Let me know how it works out." She sighed. "You're right, I guess Jenny's murderer is still out there. How you gonna catch her? And how you gonna prove it? And who do you think it was? Tina? Maybe Bette. Bette could do it, you know she could."

"I haven't figured that out yet. I never figured it was any of us, not really. And there's another problem."

"What's that?"

"This is the kind of thing I'm really awful at. Solving puzzles. Analyzing stuff. Figuring shit out. Alice, I'm a fucking hairdresser."

"You need somebody to help you. Who's the smartest person you know?"

"Bette."

"Yeah. But she's a suspect. And if it was Tina, Bette won't help you there either. And anyway she's in New York with Tina. Who's the second smartest?"

"Tina."

"Oh. Yeah. That's probably right. And same problem again. Who else is left?”

"Helena. Kit. The cops questioned Niki Stevens, because she was there. But there's no way I'm asking Niki to help. I mean, fuck.”

“I don’t think Niki did it,” Alice said, “not because she’s a nice person; she isn’t. She’s a royal bitch. But she’s just too ditzy. It'd be liking thinking maybe Lindsay Lohan was capable of pulling the Brinks armored car robbery.”

“So there's just you and me, Alice."

Alice smiled. "No. There is someone else. Someone we both know and trust, and who is smart, and articulate, and knows how to research stuff. Someone's who's quick-witted and can think on her feet. Great people skills. Never quits, never gives up. And who has an iron-clad alibi and wasn't there that night."

"Rachel Maddow?"

"Shane," Alice said.

"I have no idea who you're talking about. Joyce Wischnia?"

Joyce Wischnia had been Bette and Tina's lawyer during various and sundry life events, and had been Phyllis Kroll's lover, too.

"No! Come on, Shane! Not only is this person smart and articulate, but she also is motivated, because she loves us and would do anything for us if we asked."

Shane looked at Alice blankly.

"Shane!"

"Alice! I have no clue! Who?"

Alice sighed. "Oh, Shane. Sometimes I'm amazed at how your mind works. How quickly and completely you can blank out the past."

"Alice, stop playing mind-fuck games. Just tell me."

"Carmen."

"Carmen! Alice, she hates me! She wouldn't piss on my shoes if my feet were on fire. And she _likes_ pissing on people."

"Shane, she doesn't hate me. She likes me. She and I are friends. We've been friends for years. And anyway, water sports, that’s a different kind of pissing, and you know it."

"You’re still friends with Carmen?"

"Yes. You just didn't know about it. But we kept in touch after she moved away after the disaster in Whistler. The thing you don't yet understand, Shane, is that we, our group, weren't just your friends, we all became Carmen’s friends, too. And not to rub salt in your wounds, but you're the one who fucked up, not her. She and I e-mailed and texted and Facebooked, we talked on the phone. I went up to San Francisco a couple of times and visited her. And you remember that time I went on that Alaskan cruise? You know who was on that cruise ship?"

"She ... did you ... uh ... " Shane's mind was overwhelmed with this new knowledge. It was almost as staggering as the entire confession thing.

"No, we didn't! Jeez, Shane. I have friends I don't fuck, just like you. You and I have never done it. And Carmen needs to have this big emotional connection thing going before she sleeps with somebody. And anyway I think she's got somebody."

"She does?"

"Well, I'm not sure. I know she was seeing somebody, a school teacher, but she wouldn't talk much about it. It was kinda off-again, on-again, like there were problems. But the other way to answer your question is that no, she isn't some celibate ice queen pining away up in San Francisco, where there are more lesbians per square mile than any other place on earth who are probably lined up twenty-seven deep to get into Carmen's booty shorts."

“Well, she still hates me.”

“No, Shane, she doesn't hate you.”

“She doesn't? How do you know that? What did she say?”

“Well, yes, she hates you, okay, yes, fine, but she also doesn't hate you. Look, it's complicated, okay?”

Shane put her head down on the countertop, the phone still held to her ear. There was just so much noise in her head, and so much to process.

"Shane?"

"Yes?"

"Shane, there's something else you should know." She ignored Shane's groan. "When you were with Carmen? That eight or nine months? That was the happiest time in your whole life ever since I've known you. Even counting that one bad period after the Cheri Peroni thing. You and Carmen were a team. You complemented each other, like you were two halves of a puzzle or something. Like, you know, that Yin and Yang symbol, how it fits together perfectly?"

"That symbol always made me think of 69," Shane said.

"Well, so did Carmen. Anyway, you've always had this incredible radar about people, this ... sensitivity to what they were thinking and feeling. You always read people better than anybody I knew, and you could calm them down and understand them and talk to them. And Carmen was always bright and articulate and smart, and ambitious and had the most incredible work ethic. When she puts her mind to something nothing stops her. You know that better than anybody, from personal experience. I'm telling you, you and Carmen together would be one hell of a team."

"Alice, of all the crazy things you've said today, that's by far the craziest thing yet. Me and Carmen. You know what would happen if I went to San Francisco and knocked on her door?"

"Sure. She'd stab you to death with a dull, rusty pair of scissors. But after that, after she calmed down, you know ... she might do it. She'd do it for me, I think."

"After I stopped bleeding, she'd work on trying to get you out, sure. But she'd do it without me. I'd be the deal-breaker for her. I’m the poster girl for Carmen deal-breaker."

"Let me worry about that. Let me talk to her."

Shane sighed.

"Anyway," Alice continued. "It's about more than just getting me out of here. It's also about finding Jenny's killer."

The door behind Shane opened and the CO named Perry comma Mark stuck his head in and said, "Time's up."


	2. Awkward

Shane took the Powell Street cable car to the North Beach section of town and got off where the Mapquest directions told her to, at Chestnut Street. She stepped to the curb at the corner of the intersection where the cable car stopped, to get out of the street, and set down her small canvas duffel on the sidewalk. She turned to look downhill and out at San Francisco Bay. To her left the sun was a glowing orange Tootsie Roll pop ready to touch the horizon, and straight ahead the bay itself was on fire with sunset. Down at the bottom of the hill a few blocks away Powell Street's fabled cable car route came to an end near where the Embarcadero began. Fisherman’s Wharf was down there two blocks to the left, and Pier 39 and the Hard Rock Café were a block and a half to the right. Directly ahead and to the right at the docks eight ferries embarked for Angel Island, Tiburon, Sausalito, Alcatraz, Oakland, and other points around the bay.

Shane had never been to San Francisco, and she took a moment to be a tourist. She admired the view, then hoisted the strap of her duffel onto her shoulder. She hadn’t packed much, just enough for a day or two. With the sunset at her back she set off eastward on Chestnut, and two blocks later found the big row house where Carmen lived.

Shane stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the house and felt her heart beating fast. There were lights on, and the building gave a warm, friendly glow, which surprised Shane not at all. Carmen would light up any building she lived in. Shane drew a deep breath, climbed the few steps up to the small landing, and rang the doorbell. At first nothing happened, and she rang the buzzer again. She heard a woman’s voice inside say, “Coming.” Shane wondered if she was being observed through the security peephole in the door. A moment later she heard two locks being unlocked, and the door swung open. A woman in her mid thirties stood there. She had brown hair pulled back in a tight bun, and was dressed in a workout exercise outfit. She was neither attractive nor unattractive, and gave off the hints of butch to Shane’s finely tuned gaydar. She looked trim but well-muscled. Shane got the feeling this woman could beat the shit out of her if she wanted to.

“Yes?” the woman asked, still blocking the door.

“Hi, I’m Shane McCutch--”

“I know who you are,” the woman said. “What do you want?”

That threw Shane off, and her head buzzed with noise. She wondered if she knew this woman from somewhere, but decided no. Shane had fucked a thousand women, and although her memory wasn't perfect by any means, she was pretty sure this woman wasn't one of them.

“How do you know who I am? Have we met?”

“No. But I've seen photographs of you.”

“Uh, er, I wanted to … um … is Carmen Morales here?”

“She lives here,” the woman said. “What is it you want?”

“To talk to her.”

“What about?”

Shane was growing irritated. “Look, if she’s not home, I can come back later.”

“She’s home,” the woman said, “but you haven’t told me what it is you want to talk to her about.”

“Can’t it be just between me and her?” Shane asked.

“No, it can’t,” the woman said. “There’s nothing between you and her.”

It was like a punch in the gut, and Shane involuntarily took a step back. She expected hostility. She expected this to be difficult. She just had no idea it was going to be _this_ painful. Or with somebody other than Carmen, with a complete, total stranger.

“Look,” she said. “I’ve come all the way from Los Angeles just to talk to her for a few minutes. That’s all I want. It’s not about me and her. It’s about our friend Alice. She’s in a lot of trouble.”

“We know about Alice,” the woman said.

“Yeah, well, I just came from visiting Alice up at Humboldt. Alice is in prison for something she didn’t do. She didn’t kill Jenny.”

“That’s the first thing Carmen said when she heard about it, too,” the woman said, her attitude softening slightly. “She said there was no way it was Alice.”

“Well, then, can I come in and talk to Carmen about it? Or at least can she come to the door?”

The woman regarded her for a moment, and then they both heard from inside the house Carmen’s voice.

“It’s okay, Terri. Let her in.”

* * *

Carmen was standing in the middle of the living room just off the foyer, her arms folded in front of her. Shane had no trouble reading the body language. Carmen was wearing a pair of khaki Dockers, and a dark blue polo shirt with the name of a cruise ship embroidered on the breast. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Carmen was one of those women who not only looked fabulous when dressed to the nines, but also looked just as wonderful in slacks and man's shirt. Or even just a man's shirt.

Carmen looked at Shane in the hallway and at the duffel bag on her shoulder. "Did you just get into town?" Her tone was civil but neutral.

"Uh, yeah," Shane said.

"Are you hungry? You look hungry."

"Uh, no, I'm okay," Shane said.

Carmen sighed. "Shane, I know you're hungry. And you know you could never lie to me, so don't even try."

Shane seemed to blush. "I wasn't trying to lie. I just--"

"I know. You just didn't know how to respond." Carmen walked to a door at the side of the room. "C'mon, you want some pizza?"

"You're not gonna throw it at me, are you?"

Carmen laughed, a deep, hearty laugh that Shane loved the sound of. More important, it was a laugh she trusted, an icebreaker laugh. "No, I'm not gonna throw it at you." She pulled a jacket out of the closet and put it on. “Pizza’s hard to throw, and I missed last time I tried.”

"Where we going?" Shane asked.

"There's a pizza place not far from here that I like. I just got home myself a little while ago, and I haven't had any dinner, so I'm hungry, too. Actually, I lied. There's no less than three really terrific pizza shops slash Italian restaurants right near here on Grant and Kearney streets, just up Stockton. It's a wonder I don't weigh three hundred pounds."

“You look--” Shane started to say but stopped.

Carmen looked at her, and saw Shane was blushing.

“What were you going to say?”

“Something that would probably get me in trouble.”

“Oh. Well, suppose I give you a free pass.”

Shane grinned. “I was just going to say how great you look. How great you've always looked.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“There was never ... uh, never mind.”

“What?”

“I was gonna say ... back then ... there was never a day when I didn't think ... you know. That you didn't take my breath away.”

Shane blushed and hung her head, and Carmen flushed, too. “Well. Ah. Gee. Okay.”

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone there. Hey, doesn't the pizza place deliver?" she asked, obviously changing the subject.

"They do, but I feel like a walk. And they have a liquor license, so we can get a beer. They carry Dos Equis. You can leave your duffel here."

Shane grinned. Dos Equis had been "their" beer, the one they always drank when they lived together.

"Terri," Carmen called up the stairwell, "we're going to Vito's. You want anything?"

Shane heard Terri walk down the hall and come halfway down the stairs. She knew it was to be checked out. "No, Babe, I'm good," Terri said, looking over the pair of them carefully, like the prison guards at Humboldt had done. Terri's attitude was the same as the prison guards: Okay, mothafucka, make just one false move. "Thanks for asking."

Shane could tell there was unspoken communication going on between them, Terri's glance asking, Are you sure you're okay with her? and Carmen's equally unspoken reply, Yes, it's okay. Terri nodded thoughtfully, and went back upstairs, saying, "Okay, Sweetie, don't stay out too late."

"Yes, Mommy," Carmen called back, laughing, and they heard Terri hoot upstairs as she led Shane to the front door and down the steps to the sidewalk.

"She's pretty protective," Shane said as they walked to the corner and turned south on Stockton.

"Yes, she is," Carmen said.

"Uh, are you--"

"No, we're not," Carmen said briskly.

"Sorry," Shane said, just as fast, trying to stay on Carmen's good side. “She called you 'Babe.'” Shane found herself having to keep a tight rein on her emotions. She remembered how she'd felt when Carmen had been going with Jenny, dating Jenny ... fucking Jenny, not to put too fine a point on it. And the all-time second dumbest thing Shane had ever done was to put herself into an insane jealous panic over Carmen flirting with a couple of Russell Simmon's staff guys – guys, yet, guys with penises. How ridiculous was that? – that led Shane to go out and fuck fucking Cheri Peroni (she was Cheri Jaffe, back then, before the divorce) to get even. So even though there was nothing between them now, Shane still felt some sort of quivers at the pit of her stomach whenever she thought about Carmen with … anyone else.

“That's just Terri's thing,” Carmen said. “She calls me Babe, Honey, Sweetie Pie, Sweet Cheeks, Toots, Pica, La Pica, El Spicy, pretty much whatever comes into her head. And not just me. She does it to everybody. It saves her from having to remember people's names.”

"I get it. I had just, you know, heard that you were seeing someone."

Carmen sighed. "Yeah, well, don't believe everything you hear."

"Oh," Shane said, unsure now of her information. "They told me ... you were seeing a schoolteacher."

"Well, that was basically right," Carmen said. "I was. Maybe I still am. Or maybe not, I don't know."

"Oh," Shane said again, totally lost. "I'm sorry. I hope it works out." She ignored the tiny voice way deep in her head who murmured, “Not.”

Carmen glanced over at her, then looked down, still walking up Stockton. "I don't know."

Shane suddenly decided to push it. "Problems?"

Carmen made a sound, not a laugh, exactly. "Problems? Yeah, we got problems."

"Like what?"

"You're pretty nosy," Carmen said.

"I'm sorry," Shane said. "I didn't mean to pry. I just thought ... you know ... sometimes talking helps. And I thought--"

"I know what you thought," Carmen said. "You thought that with your vast experience of lesbians and womankind, that you might have some helpful insight into the Carmen Morales heart."

"No," Shane said. "All I thought was ... I could listen."

Carmen looked over at her sharply. Her attitude softened. "Okay, I apologize." She walked a dozen steps. "We have problems, like I said. Number one. She's in San Diego, and I'm in San Francisco."

"Okay, that's a big one," Shane said.

"A 500-mile one. Tough to drive home after a date. Number two. Schedules. She's a schoolteacher, so she works nine months a year, and has summers off, except like a lot of teachers she does all this extra stuff in the summer. Me, I work on a cruise ship, I go on cruises, sometimes I'm gone eight or ten weeks at a clip. My cruise contracts tend to be six or eight months long, and then I get a month or two off. You'd think maybe my breaks and hers would overlap, but they haven't yet. So we get to see each other maybe three weekends a year. A healthy gal like me with a healthy libido, I gotta get laid more than three times a year."

“I guess so,” Shane said. They both knew Shane had to get laid about three or four times a week. Three times a year was inconceivable. She’d go bat-shit crazy.

"Problem number three,” Carmen continued. “She's still in the closet, and she won't come out. She lives at home, and won't tell her parents, who will flip out and go ballistic if she did, so she says. Very strict military family, no dykes allowed. And worse, she's afraid for her job, afraid the school board would fire her."

"Would they? I thought they couldn't."

"It doesn't matter," Carmen said. "It's about fear. If you're terrified of the school board, you're terrified. It doesn't matter what the school board would do or wouldn't do, or the law in the state of California. She's terrified of coming out, and that's all there is to it. And then there's all the parents of her students, and what they'd think or say."

"So she's never coming out?"

"Apparently not."

"You didn't come out to your mother for a long time," Shane said.

"That was different. I was way, way out to everybody else, and Mom was in denial. I was even openly living with my lover, if you remember. It didn't affect my ability to have relationships, whether casual or serious, much less a job."

"I remember," Shane said. "By the way, how is your family? You know how much I loved them."

"They're fine."

"I'm guessing it wouldn't be a good idea for me to ask you to tell them I asked after them."

"No, it wouldn't."

They came to the pizza shop, and went in. It wasn't what Shane had expected. It was no mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall, and it was no high-production, low-quality chain. It was large and modern, and had a large eat-in restaurant section. There was a lot of glass and stainless steel, and decorated with large neon beer advertisements. The architect took the neon beer signs and made them a design element, adding more neon, mostly blue and red. All that neon gave the place a blue tinge that was nevertheless inviting and intimate.

"They have really good stromboli here," Carmen said as they were seated. It was the after-dinner lull, too late for the usual dinner crowd and still too early for the post-movie or post theater/concert crowd, so the restaurant was half empty. "And they have a lot more than just pizza. They have pretty good lasagna and pasta dishes, too, and pretty good salad."

"Cool," Shane said. "But I think I'll just stick to pizza."

"Okay, you want to split one? The usual?" Back in the day, Carmen and Shane both liked theirs with pepperoni, onion, olives and extra cheese. Shane felt a wave of -- what was it? regret? nostalgia? -- pass over her, as it was brought home to her how many things she had shared with Carmen that were still so familiar and endearing. They knew each other's drink preferences, pizza preferences, coffee preferences. Clothes preferences. Sleep preferences. Sex preferences. How each other kissed, and sighed, and moaned. And came. Don’t go there.

"Uh, yeah, the usual," Shane said.

When the waitress came Carmen ordered the pizza and two Dos Equis. When the waitress went away Carmen folded her arms on the table in front of her, and leaned forward slightly. She faced Shane squarely and looked her in the eyes. "Okay. What's going on?"

* * *

Shane's antennae, sharp as ever, were in extreme sensitivity mode. She had picked up on Carmen's body language -- a blind, stoned hermit could have picked up on it -- which was formal, civil, businesslike ... and cold. But it was time to man up, as they say.

"Before we talk about the thing I came to talk to you about, there's a couple things I'd like to get out of the way first."

"Okay," Carmen said. They both knew Shane was working through a script she’d rehearsed. Carmen let her.

"First off, I just want to say thank you for even agreeing to talk to me, for even letting me in the door of your house, and, you know--"

"For not shooting you dead with a .45 or stabbing you with a pitchfork, or running you down with a truck. Dumping your body in the bay with an anchor duct-taped around your head."

"Uh, yeah. For that. For ... uh--"

"Okay, I get it," Carmen said. "You're welcome. Cross that one off your list. What's next?"

"Mmm. I guess next is the really big one." She watched Carmen close her eyes briefly then open them again. "I want to say how very, truly, sincerely sorry I am about what happened, and how awful I felt and still feel, and how sorry I am that I hurt you. There's ... there's no excuse for what I did, and I know how completely unforgivable it was."

"Yes," Carmen said. "It was. No excuse. Unforgiveable. Nailed it. Good job. Next?"

Shane looked up at her from her hands, which were twisting each other. "Look, I know this is hard for you, but it's hard for me, too. I'm the one fucked up, and I'm the one hurt people, you most of all, and that's just the very last thing I ever wanted to do, was to hurt anybody, but I did, I know it, and if there was anything I could do--"

Carmen had reached out her hand and put it on Shane's forearm to stop her. "Shane, I get it. You're sorry. I'm sorry I was snarky."

Shane was taken aback. "I ... I really mean it, Carmen! I'm not bullshitting--"

"No, no, Shane, you misunderstand me. I know you're sorry. I wasn't being sarcastic. I know you're sorry for what you did and what happened. I've always known it. I even knew it back then. I knew what you did, and why, and about your father and what he did, and how he swindled Helena. I know the tailspin you went into afterward, and how you just totally fucked yourself up with drugs and booze and everything--"

The phrase "and everything" meant fucking Cheri Peroni yet again, both verb and adjective, and even after these several years she was too sore a subject for either of them to mention by name.

"--in order to forget. Everyone told me, afterward. And I thank you for the apology, and I accept it, and I've moved on. I really have."

"I ... I never ... I never thought you'd ever forgive me--"

"I haven't forgiven you. I anticipate never forgiving you. What I said was, I accept your apology, which is a different thing altogether, and I've moved on, also different. I'm past it, I'm over it. It's history. That's all I'm saying."

"Oh." Shane had to process that for a bit. The waitress arrived with their Dos Equis. Carmen picked hers up and tipped it toward Shane. Shane, still processing, looked up and said "Huh?" and then picked up her beer and clinked it against Carmen's.

"Cheers," Carmen said, and drank.

"Cheers," Shane said.

Carmen knew it was going to take Shane a minute to catch up, so she sat quietly. It dawned on her how quickly and easily she had slipped back into her old relationship with Shane, knowing how Shane's mind worked and giving Shane the space and time to work things out. There were -- there had been, past tense -- so many things about Shane she had admired, had ... loved ... such as Shane's good heart, her loyalty, her compassion, her lack of competitiveness, lack of bitchiness, lack of pretense and duplicity and game-playing. In so many good ways, Shane was straight-forward and honest and what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Some of her many good parts. Shane was, in almost every way that mattered (except one), a good person.

The pizza came, and the waitress gave them plates. They each helped themselves to a slice and took big bites, blowing out fiercely because the slices were so hot. After a few cooler bites, Carmen paused in her chewing long enough to ask, "You ready now?"

"Ready?" Shane asked, her mouth full.

"Ready to tell me why you're here. Why you came to see me."

"Oh. Right. I just came from Humboldt. I talked to Alice this morning. She didn't kill Jenny."

"I know she didn't."

"How do you know that?"

"I know Alice, same as you. You may have been her friend a lot longer than me, but I know her well enough to know she didn't do it, no matter how mad she was at Jenny. I love Alice, but she’s a total drama queen, and if she’d done it, you’d have heard it all over West Hollywood. There would have been yelling and screaming, and the whole neighborhood would have heard every word of it. And then if she had killed Jenny, she’d have completely fallen apart afterward, and you’d all have known that, too. She’s the second-to-the-last person on earth who would have composed herself and gone in and sat down with all of you and eaten popcorn while watching that goodbye video. Alice a silent, stealthy, clever, sneaky murderer with a great poker face? That’s just not possible, not in this lifetime."

"No, I guess not. Uh, if she’s second to last, who’s last?”

“You, of course. So what did Alice say?

"You’re not gonna believe this.”

Still chewing, Carmen wiped her mouth with a napkin. "She said she thought you did it." She picked a sliced black olive off the pizza and popped it in her mouth.

"How … how did you know?"

"Lots of people thought you did it. You were everybody’s number one suspect."

"I know." There was silence while they eat. "Did _you_ think I did it?"

Carmen had her mouth full of pizza and couldn't talk, but she shook her head no.

"Mwha nog" ("Why not?) Shane had a big bite in her mouth, too. It was really good pizza.

When she could talk, Carmen said, "Three reasons. First, you don’t have it in you. You couldn’t kill a mosquito. I’ve been told every one of you at that party had some grudge with Jenny that night, that all of you were pissed at her. They told me she stole the only prints of that movie and hid them in the attic, and that you found it. They said she fucked up your relationship or reconciliation or whatever it was with what’s-her-name—"

"Molly."

"Right, Molly. But here’s the thing about you. You’re totally incapable of rage. Whenever you get angry, even when you have good cause to be pissed as all hell, you turn it all in on yourself. You’re self-destructive, not destructive of someone else. You’re not just a very forgiving person, you are actually too forgiving. You’d have bent yourself up into a pretzel trying to figure out why Jenny wasn’t really to blame, that somehow it was you, not her, who somehow magically made her do whatever she did. That’s all parts of one reason."

"What’s the second?" Shane asked warily.

"You’re too slow. You know how long it takes you to process stuff and sort things out. Even if you were sore as hell at her, and had a big confrontation with her, if you’d wanted to kill her it would have taken you three days to decide, and another week work out when and how." The only thing you do spontaneously is go down on some pussy, Carmen thought, but didn’t bother saying. She’d been one recipient herself.

"Maybe it was an accident. Maybe I didn’t mean to kill her."

"Yup. But that’s where the third reason comes in. It’s the same as why Alice didn’t do it. If you had accidentally killed her, pushed her, or something, and she drowned, you’re still the last person on earth, you or Alice, who could go up to the TV room and sit there munching popcorn and calmly watch a goodbye video. If you’d have accidentally killed her, they’d have found you beside the body crying your eyes out and moaning and weeping and just one sick mess. Instead of the whole neighborhood hearing Alice screaming and pitching a Magnitude 8 hissy-fit they'd have heard you sobbing and wailing. And then you’d have fucked yourself up with a ton of drugs and booze and you’d have run off and fucked Cheri Peroni blind. But this time you didn’t do anything like that. Your ability to conceal such a crime, a murder no less, and act normally for days and weeks afterward is about as likely as you giving the pope a blowjob."

They eat silently for a while.

"I _was_ crying and upset, you know."

"I know. But that was because you and Bette discovered Jenny in the pool, and you both jumped in and pulled her out. You were crying and upset because Jenny was dead, she was your lover, and you were grieving. That’s completely normal, and because you behaved just as somebody would in those circumstances, it means you didn’t do it."

Carmen finished eating, and wiped her hands on a napkin. "There’s two pieces left. You want one?"

"No, I’m fine."

"I’ll take them home to Terri."

They walked home slowly, eating ice cream cones, Carmen carrying a small take-out box of leftover pizza. "So what else did Alice say?"

"She said we had to get her out, and the only way to do that was find Jenny’s murderer. She wanted me to do it, but she said I’d need help. She said I couldn’t do it alone, but I could do it if I had the right partner, which was you. She said I had really good instincts and intuition, but that you were really smart, and logical and good at solving puzzles, and you were articulate and could do the talking."

"Jeez, she must be really desperate to get out, if we’re her only hope."

"She is. She tried to put on a brave face, but she lost it."

"Poor Alice."

"She said you might not want to do it, because of working with me, that is, and said she’d contact you and talk you into it."

"Maybe she did. I had my phone on the charger and walked out without it when I went to the store. In fact, it's still up in my room."

They got to the stoop of Carmen's house. There was a light on next to the door.

“Well, it’s getting late,” Shane said. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”

“Where are you going?” Carmen asked.

“Uh, I dunno. I’ll find a hotel or something,” Shane said.

“Shane, it’s eleven o’clock at night. You can stay here.”

“Gee, Carmen, I don’t think my sleeping with you is a good idea--”

She watched as Carmen’s eyebrows knotted and her nostrils flared in anger. “Shane McCutcheon, have you lost your fucking mind? If you lay one hand on me I swear I’ll punch your lights out. No, you idiot, you’re sleeping on the couch in the living room. That’s what I meant.”

Shane blushed a deep scarlet, and mentally kicked herself for her own stupidity and verbal clumsiness. The noise level in her ears was at a roar, as it often was, and her mouth and tongue didn’t seem to be working. She had never meant to suggest sex, but had merely thought Carmen was suggesting some sort of girlie sleepover thing, that they share Carmen’s bed with a foot of space between them, or something. She hadn’t even thought it out, but never intended it the way it sounded.

Carmen stood before her with her fists clenched and balled on her hips. The expression on her face softened to something like pity. “Come in. You sleep on the couch. I’ll get you a pillow and a blanket,” she said, and ran up the stairs. Shane walked in and sat down on the living room couch. Carmen returned a minute later and put the pillow on the end of the sofa, and sat the blanket down next to Shane.

Shane sat and looked up at her, her forearms across her knees and her hands hanging limp between them. “I’m sorry,” Shane whispered. “But see, that’s why I need your help. I just don't know how to say the right things.”

Carmen shook her head as she regarded poor, beaten-puppy-dog Shane. “You’re pathetic,” Carmen murmured, but her tone was different, half amused and half sorrowful. And then she did something Shane wouldn’t have expected in a thousand years: Carmen leaned forward and kissed her gently on the forehead.

“Good night,” she said, and turned and went back up the stairs.

Shane watched her go, then stood up and kicked off her shoes then pulled her sweatshirt up over her head. She thought about it for a moment, and then unbuckled her belt and dropped her jeans. She put her clothes on the wing chair next to the couch, unfolded the blanket and laid down on the couch with it over her body. She reached up and turned off the floor lamp by her head. The room went dark, but there was enough light coming in from the street that after a minute her eyes had adjusted and she could make out the dim shadows and shapes of the furniture in the room. Outside, she could hear the night sounds of San Francisco, and what might have been a cable car two blocks away. She looked up at the darkness of the ceiling, and thought about what Carmen had said: “You’re pathetic.”

“I know,” Shane whispered.


	3. Looking Very Shane Today

**Chapter 3 Looking Very Shane Today**

Carmen got up from the kitchen table and got them mugs out of a cabinet and filled them from the fresh pot of coffee she'd just made. She put the mugs on the table and got creamer and artificial sweetener while Shane dialed the phone number on her cell. It rang twice and was answered.

"Can I speak to Sgt. Marybeth Duffy, please?" she asked into the phone. "Oh, she is? Cool. Oh, wait, let me write it down..." --she gestured at Carmen, who immediately handed her a pad of paper and a pencil. Shane wrote down the phone number, said thanks, hung up and started to re-dial. "She's been promoted to lieutenant, and she's in some missing persons unit," Shane said. She re-dialed. "Lt. Duffy, please," she said when the number was picked up.

"Duffy," came the terse response over the phone.

"Hi, Lt. Duffy? This is Shane McCutcheon. I don't know if you remem--"

"Yeah, I know who you are. The Jenny Schecter homicide. You were the girlfriend slash roommate. What's on your mind?"

"I have a favor to ask. Do you remember a friend of mine named Carmen Morales? She's here with me right now, up here in San Francisco. We'd both like to come to Los Angeles and talk to you about that case, and about our friend Alice Pieszecki, who I'm sure you remember was convicted."

"What about her? She's up at the Farm, last I heard."

"Yes, that's right. She didn't kill Jenny. Her confession was false."

"Is that so? Okay, sure. I'll call the governor right away. We'll get her out by dinner time. Gee, look at the time, gotta run--"

"Wait! Please, don't hang up! Please!"

"McCutcheon, I'm busy. Stop yanking my chain."

"Carmen and I want to come talk to you. We understand it's a closed case and all, but we'd like to look at the file. We believe Alice is innocent, and we want to help her. We'll come to your office, or wherever you want to meet. We won't even take up much of your time, if you'll just let us see the file."

There was a long silence on the phone. Carmen made a gesture, asking Shane what was going on. Shane made an inconclusive shrugging gesture.

"Hello? Lieutenant? Are you still there?"

"I'm here."

"Can we come see you?"

"When?"

"Whenever it's convenient for you. We can't come today, since we're up in San Francisco, but tell us when and where, and we'll be there."

"Let me check my schedule. Okay, Wednesday at 11, sharp. Just ask for me downstairs in the entrance lobby when you get here."

"Great, thanks, Lieuten--" Shane heard the click that told her Duffy had hung up.

"So?" Carmen asked.

"Wednesday at 11 a.m.," Shane said.

"But she hung up on you, at the end, there?"

"Uh-huh."

* * *

The Powell Street cable car crested the hill and then began the long decline down past Union Square. Shane looked over at Carmen and saw her smiling about something.

"What?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing," Carmen said, still smiling.

"C'mon, what? You always say we don't communicate. So communicate."

Carmen sighed a big sigh. "Okay, I'll tell you. But remember, I'm smiling now about this, right? Remember, I'm smiling now."

"I get it," Shane said. "Whatever it is, it's funny."

"Yes. Now, anyway. First off, before I begin, I don't have to tell you what the all-time worst day of my life was."

"Yeah, I guess I have a fair idea," Shane said.

"Okay, this was the all-time second-worst day of my life. Here it is. About a year after ... you know. Whistler, the wedding thing, I got back from a cruise, and a couple of girlfriends -- no, not that kind, just the regular kind of girlfriend, pals, buddies -- we decide to go shopping one Saturday. So it's me and Terri and Pat, and we hop on the cable car and we come here to Union Square and we shop for a while, we go in a couple places, and then we walk a block south to O'Farrell Street, that's it, right here at the next light, look to the left, halfway down the block. That's where the Hugo Boss Store was--"

"Oh, no," Shane groaned, knowing what was coming.

"Oh, yes. So we go into the Hugo Boss store. And we walk in, and I'm standing there and I see up on the wall, gotta be 15 feet tall, this giant tinted color photograph of one Shane McCutcheon, the famous fashion model, standing there topless with her hands cupping her tits and wearing nothing but a pair of Hugo Boss low-rider tighty-whities, and the caption says, 'You're looking very Shane today,' and I'm telling you, Shane, I just lost it. I'm standing there crying and sobbing, and Terri and Patty are staring at me like I've lost my mind, which clearly I have, and I'm just destroyed, and there's snot running out of my nose, and I'm pointing up at the poster on the wall, and all over the store people are looking at me, at this totally hysterical woman having a meltdown right there on O'Farrell Street in the Hugo Boss store. And I'm pointing at the poster and trying to tell them, and I'm going 'Shane! Shane! That's Shane!' which is crazy because, yes, it’s Shane, it even says Shane, everybody knows the model’s name is Shane. And then Terri gets it, she goes, 'Oh, my God! That's YOUR Shane?' and I'm shouting at her, 'Yes! Yes! That's _my_ Shane!' And everybody in the store is, like, backing away, going to the other side of the store to get away from this lunatic woman who is pointing at the poster and blubbering. And Patty and Terri take me out of the store and start calming me down and blotting my face with tissues, and I'm still crying and babbling, and I'm trying to tell them about how you have your hands over your tits, and how you have the most beautiful, most perfect nipples in the whole world and nobody can see them, and I'm telling them how awful I felt and how humiliated when you left me at the altar, which they already knew about, and they understand how it's really you, MY Shane, THAT Shane up on the poster on the wall of Hugo Boss, and I'm telling them how I loved your nipples, kissing them and kissing you, going down on you through your tighty-whities only they were Hanes or Fruit-of-the-Looms or whatever, see, and there's people walking past us on O'Farrell Street looking at the three of us, and I'm babbling about your tits, and suddenly Terri starts to giggle, partly because people can hear me rambling on and on about your tits and your underwear, and Patty starts giggling, and then next thing I know I'm laughing at myself and the whole thing, and we just started laughing and howling and whooping, and people on the sidewalk are still laughing at us. And after a while we start to calm down a little, and I say, 'C'mon, let's get out of here and go find a drink.' And Terri says, 'Oh, no. This is like horseback riding. You've got to climb back up on that horse. We're going back in, and anyway, I wanna see that poster some more. So, come on, girl, let's go do some aversion therapy and get Shane McCutcheon out of your system once and for all.' And so we go back into the Hugo Boss store, and we stand there and admire this poster, this giant wall advertisement, and I'm perfectly fine looking at it. I'm not crying or anything, and we look around the store, and you know what? Terri buys a three-pack of Shane-type low-rider tighty-whities, and then I say, 'Oh, what the hell," and I buy a three-pack, and Patty rolls her eyes, and now she's gotta buy a three-pack, and we walk out of the Hugo Boss store with nine pair of Shane-0-Magic low-rider tighty-whities. And that was the day I was finally cured of my Shane McCutcheon jimjams and leftover heeby-jeebies. That was the day I got you out of my system."

"So ... that's how Terri knew who I was, the night I first knocked on your door. She recognized me and knew who I was."

"See? Your detective skills are amazing."

"That's why she had the attitude."

"Oh, yeah. She knew from the first second who you were and what you'd done. And right at that minute, she might even have been wearing a pair of your Hugo Boss panties for all I know. She might have been looking very Shane that night. Frankly, I think you were damn lucky she didn't come down the stairs and tear you limb from limb. She's pretty protective of me."

"Yeah, I noticed," Shane said. "So, anyway, after this hilarious incident--" Carmen was amused that Shane didn't think it was hilarious at all -- "what happened?"

"When we got home I called Jenny and asked her why there was this giant poster of you in your undies hanging in the Hugo Boss store, and she told me about Carla abandoning Shay and you taking him in, and him breaking his arm on a skateboard, and you guys being desperate for money to pay his hospital bills, and so on, and how you got recruited to be a model. And she says, 'Jesus, Carmen, that advertisement campaign was in all the newspapers and all over television, didn't you see it? Haven't you guys got newspapers and Entertainment Tonight up there?' And I'm, like, 'Jenny, I just got back from a CRUISE! I've been gone for thirteen weeks! I've been to the Galapagos Islands and New Zealand! I've been on a ship, and no, we don't get Entertainment Tonight out west of Wake Island. Or if we did I was working. So, yeah, whatever publicity there was about that ad campaign, I missed it. I didn't know anything about it.’ Jenny says it was a really big deal, though."

Shane was still processing this story when they got to the bottom of Powell Street at the last stop.

"By the way," Carmen said as they got off the cable car, "those Boss low-riders are pretty comfortable. I bought six more pair. I'm wearing one of them right now, as a matter of fact. That's why I'm looking very Shane today." She turned away, laughing, to cross Market Street, Shane following glumly.

“See that big building across the street? That’s called the Westfield San Francisco Centre. It’s a nine-story indoor mall, and its fabulous. It’s got, like, more than 150 shops in it, plus a 9-screen movie theater, and even a branch of San Francisco State University.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“No, we’re going around the corner. The reason I mentioned it is that the Hugo Boss store moved into it. We can go in and see you’re still on the wall, maybe pick up some panties.”

“No thanks,” Shane said. “I’ve got a lifetime supply. It was a perk of my modeling contract.”

“Good to know you’ll never run out,” Carmen said. “You still wear panties?”

“Uh huh, usually. Why are you doing this?”

“Just working out my issues.”

Shane said nothing as they turned the corner onto 5th Street and at the end of the block reached a coffee-and-sandwich shop that had a few outdoor tables, one of which had two chairs and was vacant. “Quick, grab that table,” Carmen said. “I’ll go in and order two coffees and bring us out menus. They make fab sandwiches here.” On Carmen’s recommendation they both got tuna melts.

After her first bite, Carmen said, “This morning while you were in the shower I called my mom. I told her I was coming to LA, which she expected anyway. Whenever I get back from a long cruise I usually go down there and visit everybody for a few days.”

“I don’t think you said. Where was your cruise this time? How much time off do you get?”

“We went to Australia and New Zealand, and back. It was a really long haul, let me tell you. A lot of days at sea. But now I’m on the beach for about two months.”

“Where are you going next?”

“I don’t know yet. In a couple of weeks I’ll check back in and see what’s coming up. So anyway, we need to discuss travel plans. You left your truck in LA, right? I think we should just fly down there. I’m gonna stay at my mom’s, and she says I can borrow her car or one of my sisters’ cars whenever I want, so I’ll be mobile.”

“Okay,” Shane said.

“You know what I think about your pal Lt. Marybeth?”

“No, what?”

“I think she was trying to play tough-ass and hard-to-get, but I think she agreed to see us way too easily.”

“Why?”

“Because she wants an excuse to re-open the case.”

Shane said nothing.

“You going to participate in this conversation?”

Shane put her coffee cup down. “She knows Alice didn’t kill Jenny.”

“Oh?”

“Like everybody else, she thinks I did.”


	4. Nemesis

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was headquartered in a five-story building on Maple Avenue in Torrance. Shane and Carmen checked in at the large lobby window and waited while a sheriff’s deputy behind bulletproof glass called somebody upstairs. After listening for a moment, he cleared them to go to the elevator bank.

When they got off the elevator there was an older man standing there, apparently waiting for them. He wore baggy pants with suspenders and a sweater over an old but serviceable button-down shirt. He had an ID badge hanging from a lanyard around his neck and banging against his sunken chest. He looked to be in his sixties, Central Casting’s idea of somebody’s Midwestern grandfather. Carmen guessed he was a civilian aid retired from some dull lifetime of work as an accountant, or whatever, and who was now finding small bits of excitement hanging around a major police station during his golden years. His name tag said his name was Richard.

"You gals Morales and McCutcheon?" he asked, having no trouble recognizing them.

"Yes," Carmen said, smiling. She didn’t mind being called a “gal”; she did many senior citizen gigs and liked older people.

"Follow me," he said, and turned away without looking back. “Marybeth’s expecting ya.” He made it sound like Marybeth was his long-suffering wife.

He led them from the elevator lobby to a wide bullpen area where a dozen plainclothes cops were working, typing on computers or talking on their phones. The LASD building was built on the open plan, with big cubby farms, all flooded with natural sunlight from the tinted windows. Individual offices and conference rooms were clustered in the center. Their escort led them down a long aisle with a right turn, past two smaller bullpen areas. As they walked Shane and Carmen read the name tags outside the various office doors they passed. It became clear they were in the LASD Homicide Bureau, and there were signs, posters and logos of the Homicide Bureau’s locally famous “Bulldog” mascot everywhere. It was widely said in the LA region that the LASD homicide cops were tougher and better than their LAPD counterparts, and that’s how they acquired their mascot and nickname.

Some room tags had only room numbers, some had names of people, and some had names of departments, often in impenetrable acronyms. They turned down another aisle, entered a small bullpen area, and off the bullpen the guide showed them to an office with glass walls. The sign by its door said Lt. Marybeth Duffy, Missing Persons Unit. Richard tapped on the door twice, perfunctorily, opened the door for Shane and Carmen, then stood aside so they could enter.

Lt. Duffy was talking on the phone and gestured to them to come in and sit down until she finished her call. She was going to a department luncheon that day and was dressed in her formal uniform instead of the plainclothes she usually wore. Her stiff, starched tan shirt had epaulets showing her rank on her shoulders, a formal plastic name tag pinned to the right side of her chest, and her badge pinned to the left side next to some medals and awards. She wore a black necktie. Carmen had never met her before, but Shane had described her quite accurately as a well-built woman who was not overweight or even "stocky," but who nevertheless looked solid and formidable. She had short dark hair, and carried herself with a regal air of military command and expected deference. A warrior princess type, Carmen thought. Her gaydar wasn’t as sharp as Shane's (no one's was) but Carmen got no special vibes from Lt. Duffy one way or the other. The vibe Carmen did get was this was a woman you didn't want to mess with, much like her own overly protective housemate, Terri, whose first instinct was to demolish Shane right there on their doorstep.

"Right," Lt. Duffy said into the phone. "Right ... yes, that's a good idea ... work me up some budget numbers ... yes, okay, Frank, thanks." Lt. Duffy hung up her desk phone and pulled her Smartphone from her belt and immediately started inputting something. "Give me one more ..." -- she thumbed more data into the phone without looking up -- "… second … there." She finished, looked up and stood behind her desk, leaning forward to shake their hands as they stood, too. "McCutcheon. Nice to see you again," she said to Shane without any warmth. "You must be Morales. Nice to meet you." Lt. Duffy gave Carmen a firm, brief handshake, and sat back down. "Sit down. What can I do for you?"

Shane and Carmen looked at each other for a split second, and then Carmen began their pitch, as they had agreed, because Carmen was the talker as well as the charmer, insofar as that talent might become necessary.

"We want to talk to you about our friend, Alice Pieszecki. We both believe she's innocent, that she had nothing to do with Jenny's death --"

"Homicide," Lt. Duffy interrupted. "Or if you prefer, murder."

"Okay, murder," Carmen said, refusing to be bullied. "Alice didn't do it, even though she confessed to it knowing she'd go to prison. We know it's a closed case as far as the police are concerned, and that's fine, we understand that. But even so, we believe in her innocence, and we'd like to look at the case files and all the forensic stuff, with a view toward conducting our own investigation. We have a theory that Alice suddenly and maybe even spontaneously decided to confess, which made your investigation suddenly came to a stop, too, which is perfectly natural -- we're not criticizing in the least, certainly not criticizing you, personally, or anyone else working on the case." Carmen looked at Lt. Duffy for some sort of reaction, but got nothing but Duffy's polite attention. "What we think is that Alice's confession derailed your investigation, sabotaged it, and that if she hadn't done that you'd have kept working and identified the real murderer sooner or later, and most likely sooner."

Lt. Duffy said nothing, and just looked at her politely.

"So that's what we'd like to do," Carmen said, trying hard not to falter.

Lt. Duffy sniffed, some sort of indeterminate facial gesture. "You're not a policewoman or a private eye, past or present."

"No," Carmen admitted.

"No training at all in any kind of police work or criminal investigation."

“None," Carmen said.

"You're a DJ."

"Yes. And I work for a travel agency, I work on cruise ships."

"Olivia Travel and Royal Duchess Lines. You're Julie on the Love Boat. I did my homework." Duffy turned her attention to Shane with a casual flip of her hand. "You're a hairdresser."

"Yes, I used to be," said Shane, damping down her impulse to give Duffy some attitude. "I don’t do much anymore myself, but I’m a partner in a chain of hairdressing and beauty salons. I do some professional photography on the side, too."

"That's right, I remember now," Duffy said. "Schecter bought you a whole photo studio right before she died."

"Yes," Shane said.

“Lucky for you,” Duffy sniffed. “Too bad she didn’t put you in her will.”

“Her estate went to her mother in Illinois,” Shane said quietly, wondering why Duffy was so hostile.

"Look, I know we're not investigators or police," Carmen said, wanting to get the conversation onto safer ground. "I know we're complete amateurs. But we need to do something. We need to find the real murderer and get Alice out of prison."

Duffy ignored Carmen and turned to Shane. "What did Pyewacket say when you visited her up at Humboldt the other day?"

"Who?" Shane asked.

"Pieszecki," Duffy said. Pyewacket was the name of Kim Novak’s Siamese cat and familiar in the move _Bell, Book and Candle_ , which of course Carmen knew very well and Shane never heard of.

"You know I visited her?"

"After you called to make this appointment, I checked. It wasn't rocket science. Why do you think Alice confessed if she was innocent?"

"She was trying to protect somebody she thought did it."

"Who?"

"Me."

"You're saying she thought you killed Schecter."

"Uh, well, um, yes. I guess so. But I didn't."

"No."

"No, really, I didn't. Carmen, help me out here."

"Shane, I know you didn't do it, but either of us telling Lt. Duffy you’re innocent hardly constitutes evidence."

Shane's mouth hung open, but no words came out. There was roaring inside her head.

"Anybody else think you did it," Duffy asked, "or was Pyewacket the outlier on that?"

Shane had nothing and Carmen cut in. "Lieutenant," she said quietly, "we both know a lot of people had Shane as the primary suspect. And anybody who watches TV knows that the spouse or significant other boyfriend/girlfriend is always the number one suspect in a homicide, and yes, we all know that was Shane. And yes, we all know Shane had more motive than anybody except maybe Tina, because Jenny stole the movie film negatives that belonged to Tina's studio. But we also know Tina didn't do it, and we just have to get past looking at Shane, just like we have to get past Alice confessing and being convicted. And, while I'm at it, quite frankly, we both know you're just pulling our chains now, and we are not trying to pull yours."

Duffy relented and grinned, and sat back in her chair. "You're not going to let me have any fun at all, are you?" she said to Carmen. Carmen made a gesture with her hands, what can I say? Duffy leaned forward again and picked up her phone and punched in a couple of numbers. When somebody answered she said, "You freed up? Starsky and Hutch are here." She hung up and sat back. "Look," she said, "there's just no way the LASD is turning over the files and all the accumulated evidence to a pair of complete, total rank amateur outsiders, even if it is a closed case, as you correctly point out." She saw Shane and Carmen's faces fall, and held up a hand. "Also, I don’t have the power to re-open a closed murder case, even if it was my case way back when, because this is the Missing Persons Unit. Yes, we’re a division of the Homicide Bureau, but there are boundaries and lines, and the folks down the hall who are homicide cops would have my ass on a trash can lid. Simply put, I don't have any jurisdiction now, like I did when it was my case. Having said all that, there is Plan B."

"Plan B?" Carmen asked.

"Maybe you've heard of it. There's always a Plan B. What you guys need is a babysitter. And more than an ordinary babysitter, you need somebody with investigative training, and a badge would be a big help. Here comes Plan B now."

There was a quiet tap on the door and then Detective Lauren Hancock entered. She was a good-looking woman in her late thirties. She had high cheekbones, a wide, generous mouth that smiled easily, sleepy green-gray eyes, good coloring. Her brown hair was streaked with highlights and she wore it all pulled back into a tight ponytail that bobbed behind her head. She was in plainclothes, a dark gray pants suit with a matching vest over a man's shirt. She had her sleeves rolled up and somewhere in the world her suit coat was hung up on a hangar. She wore the gold, six-pointed, LASD star in a folder clipped to her belt on the left, and a holstered pistol on the right. Maybe 5’7” or 5’8. She had a good, athletic figure – Carmen thought it was a _really_ good figure, maybe a 36C – and a clear, appraising, don't-fuck-with-me gaze. Carmen's pulse picked up a couple of points. Shane's mouth hung open again.

"Lauren," Duffy said, pointing to Carmen and Shane, "I think you already know Starsky and Hutch."

"Carmen," Lauren said, leaning forward as Carmen stood to shake hands, "Good to see you again. Shane, long time no see."

"Hey, Lauren," Shane said, also standing and awkwardly shaking hands. "Yeah, it's been a long time." Carmen watched them both, and could see Hancock was enjoying Shane's discomfort. Ex-one-night-stand, no doubt about it. Carmen was as amused as Hancock was.

Shane turned to look at Carmen. “You guys know each other?”

“Lauren came out to the ship to interview me about Jenny,” Carmen said. “We had just pulled into Long Beach. It was a week after Jenny’s murder.”

"Starsky and Hutch?" Lauren said to Lt. Duffy as she walked to a credenza at the side of the room and leaned back against it, her arms folded. Her body language put her on Duffy's team.

"Cagney and Lacey seemed too obvious," Lt. Duffy said, "and I can never remember the names of those other two, the closeted lesbians. Risotto and Ivers."

"I understand," Lauren said. "Rizzoli and Isles."

“Whatever. Here’s the deal,” Lt. Duffy said, turning to Carmen. “Hancock is going to be your liaison and contact with the department. She’ll stick with both of you day and night, if necessary. To cover her ass and mine, we’re going to say that she’s not in charge of this investigation, because there isn’t any investigation, just you two wildcatters, and she’s just hanging around to keep you out of trouble. She’s babysitting you. That said, the three of you should work together, and you’d be damn fools to ignore her advice and suggestions, and if she tells you flat out to do something or not do something, then you do it. You follow?”

Shane and Carmen nodded.

“Good. I need to also tell you that since there is no investigation, everything is completely unofficial, off the books. It doesn’t exist. And again, to cover her ass and mine, we’re going to pretend she’s taking some personal time, she’s on vacation. There will be no paperwork, not unless you find something, and if so, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Meantime, Hancock reports to me, informally, as often as she thinks necessary. We all on the same page?”

“Yes, thank you,” Carmen said, and Shane chimed in, “Yes, thanks.”

“You can have access to any of the files and forensic evidence you may need, although there’s not much of it. You’ll have to review it all here in one of the conference rooms. Lauren has set that up for you. Nothing leaves the building unless it's in her custody, not yours, right? And neither of you goes anywhere or does anything without Hancock knowing about it and approving it. Like I said, she’s you’re babysitter, and both of you are going to be real good or Lauren will tell Momma, and you really don’t want to piss off Momma, am I clear on all that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shane said quietly.

“Got it, Mom,” Carmen said, taking a risk.

“I knew you were going to be a smartass, Morales. Don’t ask me how I knew, but I did.”

Carmen glanced at Hancock and saw she was laughing, so knew it was all right.

“All right, now everybody get the hell out of my office. I’ve got some actual, real police work to do,” Lt. Duffy said. “Hancock, enjoy your vacation. Try not to shoot them, but use your best judgment. Don't leave bodies, fingerprints, shell casings or DNA if you do.” They filed out, Hancock winking as she closed the door behind her.

* * *

“This way, kids,” Lauren said, leading them down the aisle and away from the Missing Persons Unit’s bullpen. “I got us a conference room outside the unit so we could work without any of my colleagues sticking their noses in and wondering what we’re up to.”

“Cool,” Shane said.

“So, how’ve you been, Carmen? You’re looking good,” Lauren said as they walked. She had slowed slightly so she and Carmen were side-by-side going down the hall while Shane trailed behind.

“You, too, Lauren. I’ve been good. Working too hard, as always, but to me that’s normal. I just back from a cruise to Australia, so I’ve got a month or two off before I go back aboard.”

“That’s good. Seeing your family?”

“Yes, I’m staying at my mom’s while I’m in LA.”

“Always nice to have room and board and that great home cooking, huh?” Lauren said, smiling. Hancock ducked into a cubby for a second and came back out with folder and a legal tablet.

Shane’s mind was absorbed watching Carmen and Lauren interact, how well they seemed to know each other. She had only just learned that Lauren had interviewed Carmen as part of Jenny’s homicide investigation, but it was apparent they knew each other much better than a brief interview would have suggested. They seemed to be practically friends. Had they slept together? Aroused, she imagined Carmen kissing Lauren, Lauren kissing Carmen. It had been a full decade, but she remembered the night she herself had fucked Lauren, who was then a young patrol officer riding shotgun in a squad car in Topanga Canyon. She remembered their skinny dip one night in Harvey’s pool, how she’d finger-banged Lauren as they held on to the side of the pool at its infinity edge, looking out over the lights of Hollywood, and then how they’d each masturbated against the Jacuzzi jets of water in Harvey’s hot tub next to the pool. Then, inside the house, in her expansive guest room’s king-sized bed, the veteran lesbian, 20-year-old Shane, teaching the inexperienced and nearly lez-virginal 26-year-old Lauren how to –

“Here we are,” Lauren said, leading them into a small conference room. The room was furnished with a polished wood conference table and six chairs, and at one end there was a flat-screen TV set-up with a bank of recording equipment for show-and-tell work. There was a whiteboard on one wall with a tray holding colored marking pens, and one of the end walls was corkboard for pinning up photos and whatever else an investigative team wanted. On the table sat two cardboard banker boxes, and on the ends someone had printed in large magic marker, “SCHECTER, J” and “03/08/09,” the date of Jenny’s murder. There was also its case number, 51309. One box read “1 of 2” and the second read “2 of 2,” with all the numbers circled.

“Grab a chair anywhere,” Lauren said, putting a manila folder on the table in front of her. Shane and Carmen sat next to each other in two side chairs, leaving Lauren at one end. They stared at the banker boxes, one in front of each of them.

“I know you guys are coffee-drinkers. There’s a coffee machine around the corner right next to a soda machine and a cookie/chips/candy machine if you’ve got the munchies. Help yourselves whenever you want. Coffee’s free and it’s surprisingly drinkable. Not great, but it won’t kill anybody.”

“I’m good,” Carmen said, “thanks.”

“I’m fine, too,” Shane said. “What’s in the boxes?”

“These contain everything we have on Jenny’s murder. After you talked to Marybeth the other day she told me to pull them out of storage.”

“Did you work on the case a lot?” Shane asked.

“No, hardly at all, in fact,” Lauren said. “Um, how can I put this diplomatically? Because you and I had a prior relationship I had to tell Marybeth and she had to sideline me to another case. The only reason I was allowed to interview Carmen was because Sean Holden, the guy who was supposed to talk to her, came down with the flu, so after an unbelievable amount of consultation between a shitload of upstairs brass and the DA’s office, it was decided I could take Carmen’s statement, given she was 800 miles out to sea when the crime occurred, without compromising anything. Alice had already confessed, and the interview was just wrapping up a few loose ends the D.A. wanted.”

Aha, Carmen thought to herself. Prior relationship. That could only mean one thing where Shane was concerned. She’d guessed right: Hancock was a blast from the past. And it told Carmen something else about Lauren: They played for the same team, as she had suspected from the first time they'd met.

“There’s actually a lot less evidence than you’d expect. Both boxes are only half full. Even a relatively simple, straight-forward homicide usually produces three or four boxes of stuff. Jenny’s case is unusually small.”

“Why’s that?” Carmen asked.

“Hardly any investigation, hardly any physical, forensic evidence, hardly any personal effects to collect. Alice’s confession stopped everything dead in its tracks.”

“That’s what we told Lt. Duffy,” Carmen said. “We think Alice deliberately sabotaged the investigation to keep you guys from digging deeper.”

“Well, she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams,” Lauren said, “and Marybeth was really pissed about it. She was walking around her office muttering and cursing and slamming stuff down on her desk. Finally she put on her coat and comes stomping out of her office. ‘Where you off to?’ I asked her. ‘Need me to come along?’ This is like three in the afternoon. ‘No, I’m going the fuck home,’ she says. She doesn’t normally talk like that. ‘What about the Schecter case?’ I asked her. ‘Fuck it,’ she says, ‘it’s solved. One of the bitches confessed. One of the ADAs is in with her now and they’re just waiting for her attorney to arrive.’ ‘So what’s wrong?’ I ask. ‘Bitch is lying her ass off,’ Marybeth says. ‘Look, I’m outta here. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ And like that she goes home, and believe me, when we were in homicide she never went home early, ever.”

“So how do we start?” Carmen asked.

Lauren opened the manila folder and pulled the legal tablet in front of her to take notes. "What I like to do starting out is make some lists," she said.

"That's good," Shane said. "Carmen's good at making lists, too."

Lauren wasn't sure if that was a dig of some sort, but Carmen knew it was just Shane being Shane, and it didn't bother her. Lauren was looking at Carmen.

"She means that as a compliment,” Carmen said. “To both of us. Don’t worry about it. What sort of lists?"

Lauren hesitated, checking to see if there was something going on between Shane and Carmen. She was picking up all sorts of stray vibes and tensions, but there didn't seem to be a pattern. Sooner or later everything would become clear.

"A list of everyone in the vicinity who had access to her during the critical time period. A list of people she was emotionally involved with, not necessarily intimately, although that would be a high priority. Her love life and her sexual history. The financial angle, who she owed money to, who owed her money, anyone who profited by her death. It's a cliché, but follow the money, right? And a list of her enemies, if there were any. "

"We're going to need a bigger boat," Carmen said, under her breath.

"Huh?" Shane asked.

"It's a line from the movie _Jaws_ ," Lauren said. "I think Carmen means these are going to be long lists."

"Oh," Shane said.

“Why is her sexual history relevant?” Carmen asked.

“Because it’s a good place to find enemies,” Lauren said. “Angry exes. Jilted lovers. Grudge holders. Revenge seekers.”

“Ah, got it,” Carmen said. “Like me wanting to kill Shane.” She laughed, and Shane frowned.

“Let’s start with the party that night,” Lauren said, wanting to steer toward safer territory. “There’s some information about it in the folder--” she tapped the manila folder on the table “—but it doesn’t help us much, and I’d like to start over, right from scratch. Shane, you were there, and Carmen and I weren’t, so how about you walk us through what was going on that night.”

“Okay. Well, it was a going-away tribute party for Tina and Bette. Tina had gotten a job in New York, and they had their house up for sale and had a buyer, and they were getting ready to move. We had all decided … well, I guess Jenny had decided … that we’d make this video for them of everybody saying goodbye, with Jenny filming each of us saying our goodbyes, and other people from around the country sending in videos. Carmen sent one, and Mangus, who was already in New York, and so on. There were videos still coming in, three came in that morning I picked up for her. She was cutting it and adding stuff in right to the very last minute. And that’s what we were watching.”

“Okay, so it’s a party, sort of, but not exactly a party like the word sounds like.”

“No, it wasn’t this happy kind of party with people drinking and dancing and having a good time, no.”

“Okay, right. And there’s what, not counting Jenny herself, seven lesbians watching this farewell movie—"

“Six,” Shane said. “Kit’s pretty much straight.”

“Sorry. Six lesbians and Kit.”

“Five,” Carmen said. “Max has been a guy for a while now. Although he gave birth.”

The look on Lauren’s face was priceless.

“Technically three lesbians,” Shane added. “Alice and Tina are both bisexual.”

“Well, that’s true,” Carmen said, “but Alice hasn’t had anything going with guys for years and years. She says she still thinks about guys once in a while.”

“And they found Niki Stevens outside, so we’re up to eight people, but only seven watching the movie,” Shane said. “Niki was lurking around outside.”

“Is she lez or bi?” Carmen asked Shane. “I never really knew, from all the media stories.”

“She’s pretty much totally lez,” Shane said. “Before she came out she used to pretend she was straight, but that was mostly cover. But she claims she fucked both Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, so she said, but I don’t know if it was true or not, you know how that goes, especially in Hollywood. Before she hooked up with Jenny, she had been sleeping with this boi in her entourage named Jimmi.”

“That wasn’t your Jimmi, was it?”

“No, my Jimmi was this Jamaican woman, from a couple years before you and I met. Niki’s Jimmi was some boi groupie she hung with. I met her once at some party. She was nothing special.” Shane saw the look on Carmen’s face. “And no, I didn’t,” she said, firmly but softly.

Lauren watched Shane and Carmen swat the Did-You-Fuck-Her shuttlecock back and forth, then finally broke in. “Okay, we’re getting off track, I think. When I said ‘eight lesbians’ I should have said eight women. All I meant was it wasn’t a mixed, guys-and-gals party. I didn’t intend anything by it.”

“Well, no, there were no guys except Max. But there would have been if Mangus had been in town,” Shane said.

“Uh, okay. Mangus. I don’t know Mangus, but I’ll look him up. I don’t remember seeing his name in the murder book.”

“Murder book?” Carmen asked. “You mean there’s a book about Jenny’s murder?”

“No,” Lauren said. “A murder book is the master file on a homicide investigation. It’s that big three-ring binder in one of those boxes, and as reports are developed and things happen, a copy of everything is put into the murder book. Autopsy stuff, interviews, forensics, everything.”

“What’s that folder you’re working out of?” Carmen asked.

“It’s my own file on the case, summarized from stuff I pulled out of the murder book and photocopied, key reports and stuff. Okay, first list, people on scene.” Hancock said the names out loud as she wrote them down. “McCutcheon. Alice Pieszecki. Helena Peabody. Kit Porter. Bette Porter. Tina Kennard. Max Sweeny.” She glanced at a paper in her folder. “This says Angelica Porter-Kennard.”

“Right, she’s Bette and Tina’s little girl. She was there, too.”

“And I’ve got Tasha Williams and Niki Stevens. Who’s Tasha Williams?”

“She was Alice’s girlfriend until just a week or so before the party,” Carmen said. “They’d just broken up. She’s an LA police officer now; she was in the police academy at the time Jenny died.”

Shane looked at Carmen, amazed. “You know Tasha? I had no idea.”

“Oh, sure,” Carmen said. “She came up to San Francisco with Alice two or three times.”

“Two or three times?” Shane asked.

“Shane, I told you the other day, I stayed friends with everybody. Yes, I know Tasha.”

Shane just grunted. To Lauren she said, “Sorry. Keep going.”

“Niki Stevens,” Lauren said. Shane looked away. Lauren made eye contact with Carmen.

“Don’t know her. Not a fan,” Carmen said. “I’ve seen a few of her movies. Meryl Streep’s career is safe.”

Shane shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I don’t even know what the hell she was doing there.” She looked at Lauren. “Did she ever give you guys an explanation? Somebody said something about she wanted to talk to Jenny, but hiding in the bushes, that makes no sense to me, even for Niki. Especially for Niki.”

Lauren looked at Shane, glanced at Carmen, then looked back at Shane.

“What?” Shane asked.

“Shane, who stole the movie negatives from the studio?”

“What do you mean, who stole them? Jenny did. I found them in our attic, I showed them to Tina. Everybody knows that. That’s why I was so pissed at her, that and my jacket with Molly’s letter she hid up there.”

“Okay, that’s what I thought,” Lauren said.

“Wait – Oh my god!” Carmen blurted, clamping her hand over her mouth in shock and sudden realization. “Ohmygod, ohmygod.”

“What?” Shane asked turning from Lauren to Carmen back and forth. “What’s going on?”

“Shane,” Lauren said quietly. “Jenny didn’t steal the movie film. She probably hid your jacket up there, like you said. But she didn’t steal the negatives. Niki Stevens did.”

Shane scowled, disbelieving, looking from Lauren to Carmen. She was processing, and still a thousand miles behind.

“Shane,” Lauren began, but Carmen held up her hand.

“Give her a minute. She needs a minute.”

Shane looked toward Carmen, but her eyes were turned inward, her mouth open, slack. Noise, like a freight train. In her head. Climbing the pull-down staircase to the attic. Finding her jacket up there. Finding Molly’s letter in the pocket. Incredible anger at Jenny, like no kind of anger she’d ever felt before. Reading Molly’s letter. Then, almost by accident, seeing the twelve stolen film canisters.

Jenny didn’t do it.


	5. The Usual Suspects

Lauren stood up, left the room, and came back a minute later with a bottle of water she sat down on the table in front of Shane. Shane looked up at her. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

“You okay?”

Shane nodded. “She didn’t do it.”

“No, she didn’t.”

"Niki confessed?"

"Yep."

"Nobody told me."

“No."

“We all thought--”

“You thought what Niki wanted you and everyone else to think. Everybody seems to think Niki’s not smart enough to tie her own shoelaces, and maybe she isn’t. But she’s a cunning little bitch, completely amoral, and she always has this posse she surrounds herself with. Who knows, maybe one of them is the brain who puts ideas in Niki’s head. And she confessed to something else, too, that you need to know about. After the negatives were stolen, somebody e-mailed a ransom demand to the studio to get the negs back, and that e-mail was traced back to Tina’s office laptop. So for a while that made the studio think Tina stole the negatives. I don’t know if Tina ever told you about that part.”

“Carmen shook her head no. “I heard there was some kind of ransom thing,” Shane said. “I didn’t know details. I wrote it off as just bullshit. Gossip.”

“Well, that was Niki, too. And sure, maybe one of her posse thought it up and told her how to do it, or did it for her. Niki never expected the studio to pay the money, she just wanted to stir up more trouble, and maybe get people to think Jenny and Tina were in collusion stealing the negatives. Maybe the studio would go to the police, the police would get search warrants on Tina’s and Jenny’s houses, and bingo, what would they find in Jenny’s attic? The film canisters. Checkmate.”

Carmen broke in. “I assume we’re talking about standard 35-millimeter canisters, right? Size of a dinner plate, inch thick, those kind?”

Lauren flipped through pages in her folder, found what she was looking for. “Film canisters, 12. Ten point five inches diameter, one point five inches deep. Canisters had white tape around the sides, sealing them shut, and on the tape written in black magic marker, DEV NEG quote LEZ GIRLS unquote and numbered one to twelve. Dusted for prints by blah blah da da, let’s see, Outside of most canisters free of prints. Wiped clean, in other words. Two canisters with Shane's and Tina's prints. Just two finger-tips from Tina, actually. Apparently she never actually held on in her hand. Niki wore gloves and was careful about handling them. Couple of fingerprints inside the canisters, all belonging to film techs and camera people, exactly as one would expect, and means nothing except that Niki never opened them or at least never touched the reels. No surprise there.”

“And no help.”

“Nope.”

“So how’d they get in Jenny and Shane’s attic?”

“That’s easy. It wasn’t hard for Niki to know when you guys weren’t home and when you were at the studio, working. And she knew you kept a key to the back door inside one of those hollowed-out fake rock things in a flower pot on the back porch—”

“Oh, fuck,” Carmen said quietly.

“What?” Lauren asked.

“I bought that rock. That was a long time ago. Remember, Shane? Way back when. Tim had moved out and you had just moved in with Jenny and then Jenny and I began our affair, and I was coming and going pretty often, but I didn’t want my own key, not until later, so we bought that rock and put a backdoor key in it. Remember? Has it been there ever since?”

Shane nodded.

“How many people knew about it?” Lauren asked.

“Shit,” Shane said. “Uh. Me, Jenny, Carmen, Alice, Tina, Dana before she died, Bette, Max, Kit, Helena, Mangus, Mollie, Tasha, Adele, Paige—”

“Okay, got it,” Lauren said. “About half of southern California.”

“More or less,” Shane admitted.

“And of course Niki, who had an affair with Jenny and was pissed at her. She said Jenny made her spend the night having sex and the next morning kicked her out on her ass. So Niki went in one day in broad daylight while you guys were out, went to the closet, pulled down the steps, put the canisters in the attic, and poof, she was gone. The perfect crime.”

“How’d she even know there was an attic or pull-down stairs?” Carmen asked.

“Ah! Marybeth thought of that, too,” Lauren said, grinning proudly, “and asked her. Seems Niki had been in that very closet a couple times before. Lying on her back. Looking up. Right up at the pull-down ladder in the ceiling.”

Shane put her forehead down on the table.

“While she was fucking,” Carmen said.

“While she was fucking,” Lauren nodded.

“My fault.” Shane whispered, not lifting her head. “That’s my fault.”

“Actually, Shane, worst case, it’s only half your fault, and more likely none at all,” Lauren said. “Seems Niki and Jenny fucked in that closet, too. More than once, so she said. That must have been a popular closet. Lesbians and closets. Ironic, huh?” “Jesus Christ,” Carmen whispered, and reached over for Shane’s bottle of water, uncapped it, and took a swallow. “I painted that closet. I painted that bedroom.”

Lauren looked at her.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Carmen said. “Yes. Yes, I did. I fucked in that closet, too. It was a nice, big walk-in, carpeted and everything, very cozy. First with Jenny, then when it became my room, with Shane. To be perfectly honest with you, there’s hardly a square inch of that house that somebody didn’t have a healthy, juicy orgasm in. Bedrooms, closets, hallway, bathroom floor, toilet, shower, studio, kitchen floor, kitchen counter, kitchen table, living room floor, coffee table. And then there's the studio--”

“Carmen,” Shane said quietly.

Carmen stopped. “Sorry.” She took another drink of water. “Lauren, tell me this: If Niki stole the negatives, why isn’t she in jail?”

“Long story short, the studio declined to press charges. Marybeth told Tina she could tell the studio the canisters had been found, and a day or two later there was a big meeting in the largest conference room Marybeth could commandeer, with her team, a bunch of studio suits, more lawyers than are in Hell. Shane, were you in that meeting, too?”

“No. Marybeth told me there was going to be one, and asked if I wanted to come, since I was the one who actually found them. But … I couldn’t. I didn’t care about the negatives, or even the movie itself.”

“So what happened?” Carmen asked.

Lauren shrugged. “Best as I can reconstruct it from what Marybeth said, a lot of yelling, screaming, finger-pointing. Tina was hugely pissed that the studio had changed the ending—“

“What do you mean?” Carmen asked.

Shane lifted her head from the table. “The studio guys got chicken-shit cold feet. They wanted Jenny to change the ending, so that Jesse, the main character, instead of staying a lesbian, goes back to her old boyfriend Jim. Then they changed the name, from _Lez Girls, L-E-Z,_ to _The Girls, T-H-E_. They said the movie was too lezzie.”

“Too lezzie? Wasn’t it all about lesbians?” Lauren asked. “A bunch of lesbian friends, based on you guys and your lesbian friends, lovers, relationships, all that hot, steamy--”

“Thank you. Exactly,” Shane said. She turned to Carmen. “You should be grateful you weren’t a PA on that shoot. I don’t have anywhere near your experience or Tina’s in the movie industry, but that shoot had to be the most fucked up from beginning to end in the history of Hollywood.”

“I bet Tina was even more pissed when she heard about the extortion thing, and getting blamed for it,” Carmen said.

“She was,” Shane said. “She was furious.”

“Yes. But as far as I can tell from the files, nobody has yet told Tina it was Niki. Marybeth told the studio the negatives were recovered, and they knew who took them, and did the studio want to press charges? I think she told what's-his-name, Aaron, the studio head, but I don't think she told anyone else. Tina knows there was an extortion attempt, and she was blamed. But I can’t see anywhere in the paperwork that she learned that was Niki, too. And of course she never got an apology from anybody. She and Bette moved to New York right after Jenny’s funeral.”

“I was at sea when they were shooting and when I got back Alice told me a few stories, but I never heard why Jenny got fired off the set. Tina said it was the worst production she’d ever been involved in, but she was too stressed to talk much, and then the baby started crying so she had to go deal with it. Alice didn’t know and Jenny wouldn’t tell me anything. She said it was just studio politics.”

Shane snorted. “Shit.”

“What?” Lauren asked.

Shane sighed. “Okay, let me start by saying that movie was the worst thing that ever happened to Jenny. It completely sent her off the deep end into this … I don’t know, ‘ego trip’ doesn’t begin to explain it. She’s always been a little, you know…” she paused, handicapped, as always, but her own inarticulateness.

“A diva,” Carmen said. “And manipulative.”

“Yeah. So anyway, what happened was, Jenny and Niki were getting it on. And I’m about the last person on earth who should be criticizing somebody for fucking somebody they shouldn’t. But … this wasn’t so much ‘wrong,’ you know, and I don’t mean immoral or illegal. Maybe what I mean is just stupid and … “

“Counterproductive?” Carmen asked.

“Yeah. Counterproductive, and more than a little weird.”

“How so?” Lauren asked.

“Well, like you said, the book was based on Jenny herself, and all of us, her friends, but she wasn’t also just the author, she was the director, even though she had no experience directing. The power trip was something fierce. And Niki was playing Jesse, Jenny’s character. Which was horrible casting, but that’s beside the point. It wasn’t that Jenny was fucking an actress, or even the director fucking the leading lady. That’s been done about a billion times in Hollywood. When Jenny was fucking Niki, it was like Jenny was fucking herself. She _was_ fucking herself. The person playing the character of herself.” “Okay, that _is_ a little weird,” Lauren said.

“You don’t know Jenny,” Carmen said.

“That’s what I’m finding out,” Lauren said. “So then what happened, Shane?”

“The Subaru people sponsored this 200-mile marathon bicycle fundraising thing for breast cancer awareness—“

“Sure. The Subaru Pink Ride, I think they called it. I was thinking about going myself, but something came up at work and I couldn’t go.”

“You know our friend Dana Fairbanks died of breast cancer, right? So that has a lot of special meaning for us, so we all put together a team called Team Dana. It was a two-day thing, and everybody brought along tents and camping stuff, and everybody, hundreds of us, camped out over night. It was supposed to be fun—“

“Lezzies roasting hot dogs and S’Mores over an open fire, singing _Kumbaya_ \--”

“Right, all that, although it wasn't an all-lesbian thing, there were lots of straight women there, too. Anyway, I went to Costco and got this small pup tent. Niki was on the team and Jenny was in her Marie Antoinette phase, she had this administrative assistant named Adele Channing, who also came along. Adele was this secret sociopath climber and to suck up to Jenny she got them this huge tent, it looked like it stolen out of the prop room for the road show of _Camelot_. It was huge. The rest of us, we’re in regular tents, the kind you’d buy in a sporting goods store or find at a Boy Scouts jamboree, and she’s in a Ringling Brothers upgrade. Anyway, that night Jenny and Niki are in the tent, and they decided to make a sex tape--”

“Oh, Christ, no!” Carmen murmured.

“--fucking their brains out taking turns with a strap-on--”

“This is like that cliché about watching a train wreck,” Lauren said. “You see disaster coming down the tracks and you can’t do anything to stop it.”

"Hollywood celebrities making a secret lesbo sex tape," Carmen said. "What could possibly go wrong?"

“Yeah. So somehow Adele made a copy of the tape. What you probably also don’t know is at the start of shooting the studio was worried about Niki’s reputation and orientation, and they made her go to some public events with some hunky guy for a beard, to convince everybody she was straight, just playing a role in this lesbian movie, but she wasn’t really a lesbian herself, blah blah blah. So anyway, the Monday morning everybody got back from the Pink Ride, Adele goes to the studio suits and says there’s a big problem they need to know about their supposedly non-lesbian, straight-arrow girl star being joyfully fucked by their very lesbian director. So in a New York minute there’s this emergency meeting, they call in Tina, they call in Jenny, there’s lawyers and executives, and the star of the show is Adele. Aaron, the head of the studio says, ‘Okay, Adele, why are we here?’ and Adele starts showing them the sex tape—“

“Have you seen it?”

“No, but Tina told me about it. What I’m telling you is what she told me. So they are all watching this sex tape, Jenny on her back in the tent, calling out to Niki, ‘Fuck me, fuck me with your big cock, and there’s Niki, wearing this strap-on Jenny made her put on, and she starts fucking Jenny—“

Carmen closed her eyes and put her head down on the table.

“Tina, God bless her, says turn it off, turn it off, and Adele stops it, and tells them she’s got 25 CD copies of it in envelopes addressed to the networks and cable TV entertainment and gossip shows and Perez Hilton and God knows who else. She’s flat-out blackmailing the studio. Aaron says, well, what do you want? And Adele tells them she wants Jenny fired, and she wants to take over as director, starting, like, five minutes ago, for the good of the project and in the best interests of the studio, blah blah. And Aaron snaps his fingers and bingo, Jenny’s out. That’s all the part I didn’t know anything about until later, the sex tape and the blackmail. So next thing, Jenny comes out of the meeting and goes to the set, and I’m there, everybody’s there, all the actors, you know, Begoñia, Isabella, Marci and Gretchen, Cammi, Niki, she’s there, the cinematographer, the camera guys, the sound guys, the lighting guys, the grips, the makeup people, wardrobe, PAs, craft services. I mean, fucking _everybody_. Car, you’ve been on film sets--”

“Sure, could be thirty, forty people, not counting the actors. Maybe even more.”

“Right. And it’s Monday, it’s a work day, and they’re getting ready to shoot scenes, you know, sound checks and lighting checks and all that, waiting for the director to get back from the meeting. So Jenny comes in and gathers everybody, she makes a big speech about what assholes the studio guys are and she’s walking out immediately, and who’s coming with her? And see, I have no idea what’s going on, nobody does, but they aren’t gonna walk out just on Jenny’s say-so, and it’s not like anybody is surprised to learn that studio bigwigs are dicks, I mean, it’s Hollywood, you know? Of course they’re dicks, what else is new? So long story short, nobody walks out except me, and I go because, you know, it’s Jenny, and I’ve gotta support her no matter what, and anyway, I don’t give a shit about that particular job, I’m only a bottom-of-the-totem-pole hairdresser. So Jenny and I walk off the set. And after we leave, I ask her, Jenny, what the fuck’s going on? And she says it’s bullshit, studio politics, Adele’s a scheming bitch, betrayed her, blah blah, she tells me everything except that there’s a sex tape of her and Niki that was the cause of her being fired.”

“So how’d you find out?”

“A couple days later I saw Tina next door and I was worried about her job, was she likely to get fired, too, so we talked, and she gave me the inside scoop.”

“Did she have the sex tape?”

“No, she said the studio destroyed it. When they made the deal with Adele, she turned over the twenty-five copies she had--”

“She wasn’t bluffing?” Lauren asked.

“Shit, no. You don’t know Adele, she doesn’t bluff. So anyway, Tina said Adele turned over the copies and her copy of Jenny’s original. That was key to the deal.”

“What happened to Jenny’s original?”

“Tina said she asked her, and Jenny claimed she destroyed it because Niki had asked her to. I should add that Jenny and Niki broke up later, and Jenny told me Niki was dead to her.”

“Those were the words she used, dead to her,” Lauren asked.

“Yes, exactly. She’s dead to me.”

“And all the copies of the tape are destroyed.”

“Absolutely,” Carmen put in, interjecting for the first time. “Every copy, except for the secret copy Adele kept, and the secret copy the studio kept, and the secret copy Jenny kept.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too,” Lauren said.

“You think Jenny kept a copy?” Shane asked. “You think she lied?”

“I hardly know her at all,” Lauren said, “except from the file and the stories you guys tell me. But yes, I’d bet money on it. Having said that, I’d value what you two say. Did she keep a copy? Carmen?”

“Absolutely. One hundred percent certain. I have not a shred of evidence, but I'm one hundred percent certain.”

“Shane?”

“I …” She stopped.

“I think Shane’s having a problem dealing with Jenny lying to her,” Carmen said quietly.

Shane looked glumly from one to the other. “Sometimes I feel like an idiot.”

“No, Shane,” Carmen said. “You’re not an idiot. You’re the most trusting person I know, that’s all, and you defend your friends down to the very last second, and then beyond. You say you feel like an idiot, but one of your very best qualities is your complete, total loyalty to your friends. It always was.”

Shane turned red, embarrassed. “Can we change the subject? I think we’re wasting a lot of time on this.”

“”Respectfully, Shane, I disagree,” Lauren said. “First, I’m learning a lot about Jenny and what was going on in the last few weeks of her life, and I need to get up to speed. Second, the three of us don’t all have access to the same information. You didn’t know about Niki’s confession, and who actually stole the negatives. Carmen and I didn’t know there was a sex tape that got Jenny fired.”

“I still don’t see what it has to do with anything,” Shane said.

Carmen put her hand up before Lauren could talk. “Shane, Lauren’s right. What you don’t see yet is that it’s a possible motive for Jenny’s murder. Lauren, why was Niki hiding in the bushes that night? What did she say?”

“She said she wanted to talk to Jenny.” “About what?”

Lauren opened her file and consulted her notes. “It’s not clear. Something about their relationship, getting back together, if you can believe it, which I can't. And then she saw there was a party going on, people at Tina and Beth’s house, and thought her timing was bad. So she walked around the block to think things out, and when she came back there were sirens and police cars and EMTs, so she hid out in the bushes to see what was going on.”

There was silence. “So what do we think?” Lauren asked.

“Weak,” Carmen said.

“Lame,” Shane said.

“Bullshit? Can we agree on bullshit?”

“I’m in,” Carmen said.

“Me, too,” Shane said.

Lauren looked at Carmen. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I bet I am.” Carmen said.

“Hey, guys, let me in here, would you?” Shane said, irritated.

“Everybody was thinking there might be a connection to those stolen movie negatives--” Carmen began.

“—but it’s not,” Lauren picked up, “it’s about the sex tape--”

“Right. Niki lied.”

“But not about everything,” Lauren said. “Just the reason she wanted to talk to Jenny. The reason why she was there.”

“And about hiding in the bushes. Who takes a walk around the block anymore to think? Why sneak around the back of the house? If she came over to talk to Jenny--”

“—she’d have come to the front door--”

“—and she wouldn’t have known there was a party going on next door, because everybody was at Bette and Tina’s, sitting under the pergola in their back yard--”

“--there was no party noise, no music. The only way you’d know there was a party--”

“--was if you were watching the houses from the back.”

“You guys are freaking me out when you finish each other’s sentences,” Shane said.

“Sorry,” Lauren said.

"Okay, let's think about this. Maybe Niki came to get Jenny's copy of the sex tape. Or make sure it was destroyed."

"Or even just ask her what the situation was with it," Lauren said. "Maybe she hardly even knew it was a key element of Adele's blackmail. At dead minimum Niki would want to know where she stood, and the status of the sex tape, who had it, all that."

“Why didn’t Lt. Duffy pick up on this?” Carmen asked.

“I know why,” Lauren said. “The confession.”

“Huh?”

“Not Alice’s confession, Niki’s. They _were_ pushing her, and when they did Niki confessed to stealing the movie negatives and planting them in Jenny’s attic, she gave it up. She said she hoped nobody would ever find them up there. And if somebody did find them, well, they’d blame Jenny, and it would be paybacks for the way she’d treated Niki.” Lauren consulted her notes. “The movie was quote an embarrassment unquote and a quote terrible film unquote. She said she didn’t want it released because she didn’t want to deal with quote the press and the criticism and the bad reviews unquote. Sean and Marybeth changed their focus to the admission about the negatives, because that was such a major issue. I’m dead certain they would have come back to Niki’s statements about why she was there. See, that’s how these kinds of interviews work. You take the first statement, and then later on you go back and make the person repeat everything a second time, and you look for inconsistencies. And then a third time, and a fourth, or however many it takes. And Marybeth would have eventually pulled the truth out of Niki except…” She held out her hand, palm up, to Carmen and Shane.

“Alice’s confession,” Carmen said, "so there never was that second, third and fourth time."

“Just like you guys said. Alice’s confession derailed the process. And there’s Marybeth, sitting there with not one confession, but two. Niki confesses she stole the negatives. Alice, without knowing about Niki, confesses to Jenny’s murder, thinking Shane did it.”

“Right!” Carmen said with animation. “But here’s something else. One of those confessions was false, namely Alice’s, whereas Niki’s was true.”

“Well, we don’t know that for certain, but yes, we’ll have to take a look at it. One thing we do know for damn sure, we have to go talk to Niki. We have to get a full, complete explanation of what she was doing there, we have to break it down and check it out every which way, until we get the truth.”

“Because she’s now a major suspect,” Carmen said. "And the sex tape is linked to the stolen negatives. We don't have one movie to worry about, we have two."

“Damn straight,” Lauren said.

“Guys, you’re giving me a headache, and so’s my stomach, because I’m starved. What time is it? I need some lunch.”

Lauren looked at her watch. “One-thirty. Yeah, we need a break. Look, there’s a place a couple blocks from here, and it’ll be clearing out by now. Let’s go get something to eat and we can continue the discussion there.”

* * *

They took a booth near the back. Carmen noticed that Lauren was known to the waitresses and said hello to the cashier, by name. It only took a glance to know it was a popular cop place; even the customers in plain clothes were readily identifiable as detectives.

“Hey, Lauren,” the waitress said, coming to their table and handing out menus.

“Hey, Pat. What’s good today?”

“LA’s finest have been scarfing down the chicken pot pie. I think there may be one or two left.”

“Sounds good to me. And an iced tea.”

“I’ll take iced tea and a club sandwich, hold the mayo,” Carmen said. “I think Shane’s gonna need a few minutes, but you can bring her an iced tea, too.”

Shane was annoyed. “She’s trying to say that I take a long time to make up my mind.”

“Yes, Shane, that’s what I was saying, but not in a negative way. I think it’s important that Lauren get to know you, and know how you think. A lot of people have mistaken ideas about you, and I’ve always thought, right from Day One with you and me, that it was important to get a good handle on you. True?”

Shane shrugged, nodded.

Carmen turned to Lauren. “Here’s what you need to know about Shane, in a nutshell. She has this thing, some people call it hyperacuity, and it’s got some other names. But here it is: Shane takes in tremendous amounts of information, much more than you and me and most people. It can be language, speech, tone of voice, it can be body language, mood, facial expressions, it can be hard data like what’s on that menu she’s holding. In the two minutes we’ve been here Shane has looked at maybe 15 people, absorbed data about them. She’s noted the smells, she seen, oh, maybe, the platters six or eight people are eating and what looks good and what doesn’t. She smelled half a dozen different lunches. So she’s processing five or ten times more stuff than you and me, and most of the time she’s unaware of it, it’s like she has this tremendous computer in the back of her brain sucking up all kinds of information, but there’s a cost to this, which is time. Sometimes it takes her a long time to make up her mind, and there’s people think Shane is, well, you know, there’s not a polite way to say it, but let’s just say, sometimes people think she’s slow. You know, just not real bright, not real quick. And see, that’s just so, so wrong. And it’s true, sometimes she isn’t quick. But, oh my god, is she thorough. And she knows tons of stuff she doesn’t know she knows, it’s just stored in that computer in the back of her head, and it takes her time to sort it out and process it because there's just so much of it. And you just have to let her do that. Because she has tremendous insight into people, and she’s a terrific listener, she can get people to talk like you wouldn’t believe. She has great people skills. You know why? She shuts up. She let’s the other person talk, because she’s busy absorbing information. And sometimes she’s lightning fast. I don’t know about you, but I think I have pretty good gaydar. But Shane’s gaydar is positively supernatural. It’s beyond unreal, it’s beyond infallible. I mean, she knows when someone is gay or bi when they still don’t know it themselves. But here’s the thing. She’s like that with other stuff, not just gaydar. She can almost always tell when somebody is telling the truth. She’s like a human lie detector, only sometimes it takes her a while to process it.”

“Okay, Carmen, you can stop now,” Shane said. “I want the chicken pot pie.”

Lauren and Carmen laughed.

* * *

“Okay, the next list we have to make might be uncomfortable for you both, but it’s got to be done,” Lauren said

“I know what this is going to be,” Carmen said quietly.

“Yes,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry. A list of lovers, fuck buddies, spouses, anybody Jenny had a sexual or romantic relationship with. You two are at the top of the list. Shane, you’re number _numero uno_ , because you were her lover and roommate at the time of her death. Carmen, you’re next, even though you have an ironclad alibi, because people tell me you and Shane were the two people who knew her the best and had the longest relationships with her. Would that be correct?”

“Yes, that’s probably right,” Carmen said. Shane nodded, not looking up. Their investigation into Jenny’s murder had barely even gotten started and already it was taking its toll on her spirit.

“Okay, who else. We’ve got Niki. I understand Jenny and Max had a relationship. Anybody else from the party that night?” Lauren wrote names down on a separate page of her legal tablet, numbering them as she went. Pat, the waitress, came and took away their empty plates and refilled their iced teas.

Carmen glanced at Shane, who shook her head no, none from the party.

Carmen, the list-maker, spoke. “Okay, from the time she first moved to California, in chronological order. Her ex-husband. A woman named Marina Ferrar, she’s the one who first introduced Jenny to lesbianism.”

“Is she still around somewhere?”

“Not so far as I know, not for four or five years. Do you know any different, Shane?”

Shane shook her head no.

“A woman named Robin, she’s been out of the picture for years. A guy who worked at the aquarium, also a one-week romance long ago. Then me, then Max. Then a French woman named – I hope you’re sitting down – Claude Mondrian.”

“No shit?” Lauren said.

“No shit, that’s her name,” Carmen said. “She was a travel writer specializing in gay travel. Jenny met her up at Whistler the day before our wedding. We all met her, too, and she was actually there at the wedding that night when … you know. I kidded Jenny about her, asked her how she was, you know, in bed, because they spent the day together in Claude’s hotel room fucking their brains out while Max wandered around trying to find them.”

“Was Max pissed? She should have been.”

“He. Yes, I think he was upset. Shane?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t in the hotel, I didn’t see them. But if I had to guess, I’d say yes.”

“Who’s your source on this?” Lauren asked Carmen.

“Alice. She knows everything about everybody. She not only knows who slept with who, she knows who wants to sleep with who.”

“Gaydar?” Lauren asked.

“No, not exactly,” Carmen said. “Shane is the world champion at gaydar. What Alice has is … um … let me think—“

“Fuckdar,” Shane said.

“Right,” Carmen said, “Fuckdar is exactly right. Alice knows who just had sex with who, or who is going to have sex with who in, say, the next five minutes. In her own way, she’s almost as uncanny as Shane is with gaydar. And it doesn’t have to be lesbian sex, either. She knows when straight people or bi people are fucking or just fucked. Gay guys, too.”

“All right, as titillating as this is, let’s get back on track,” Lauren said. “Who else is on Jenny’s relationship list? I saw a reference into the file about a divorce and you mentioned an ex-husband. Somebody named Tim Haspel.”

Carmen and Shane glanced at each other. “You can tell it better than me,” Shane said.

“Okay. Yes, she was married once, for about a day, literally, just a day, or actually just one night, it was over the next morning. She met Tim in college, in her sophomore year back in Illinois and they fell in love and dated for three years, lived together, and when Tim got a job at Cal U after graduation Jenny followed him out here, that’s how she came to Los Angeles. They rented the house where we lived, next to Bette and Tina’s house.”

“So then what happened?” Lauren asked.

“Short version or long version?” Carmen asked.

“Medium-long,” Lauren said.

“Got it. So Tim and Jenny are living next to Bette and Tina, and they meet as next-door neighbors, and Jenny starts hanging around _The Planet_ , which at the time was a coffee bar—“

“I know it,” Lauren said. “On Santa Monica Boulevard. It’s a lesbian nightclub now.”

“Right, Kit owns it, she’s Bette’s sister—"

“Sister? I thought half-sister.”

“Well, yes, technically half, but nobody worries about the half stuff,” Carmen said.

“Got it. Just keeping the record straight.”

“So anyway, the woman who owned _The Planet_ before Kit was this woman Marina Ferrar, we just talked about her, who turned out to be a married Italian countess, although nobody knew it, partly because she was a pretty hardcore lesbian, and who was also in a lesbian relationship, although nobody knew that right away, either. But I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, Marina was the woman who first seduced Jenny, right there inside _The Planet_ while Tim was sitting at a table eating a veggie burger. It got hot and heavy, and one day Tim walked in on Marina going down on Jenny in the studio behind their house. Marina leaves, Tim and Jenny argue, Jenny pleads for forgiveness and swears to end the relationship with Marina, and Tim makes her go tell Marina face-to-face while he watches that it's over. Then they drive to Lake Tahoe and get married and the next morning Tim realizes it was all a terrible mistake, and walks out on her, leaves before she wakes up. So there she was, newly married, in a wedding mill motel in Lake Tahoe, no money, no car, no husband. Pretty bleak.”

“She was too proud and too humiliated to call Marina,” Carmen said, “so she called Alice.”

“Alice? Really?” Lauren asked.

“She called me first, but I wasn’t answering my phone,” Shane said quietly. What she didn’t have to say was, “because I was off fucking somebody.”

“One last thing,” Lauren said, anxious to change the subject. “I think I need to talk to each of you by yourselves.”

Shane and Carmen looked at each other and Lauren could see each reading the other's reactions. Already, in the little time she'd seen them together, Lauren was impressed at how their minds clicked, how each knew what the other was thinking or going to say. And even though they were completely different personalities in so many ways, they were like identical twins who could finish each other's sentences. No, not identical twins, but two halves of some sort of thing, some entity comprised of their two halves. Like an old, long-married couple, if that made any sense.

“Uh, okay, I guess,” Carmen said, turning back to Lauren. “Is there a special reason?”

“Yes and no,” Lauren said. “On the one hand, it is standard interrogation procedure. I can see you don't like the word 'interrogation,' and I understand that. It's just another way of saying 'discuss' or 'ask questions.' But it is an incontrovertible fact that the way people answer questions and even think about things is very different if they are alone versus with someone else in the room. Look, it doesn't mean anything, so please don't try to read anything into it. So that's the 'no' part.”

“What's the 'yes' part?”

“The 'yes' part is that I have some things I want to ask each of you that would be considered fairly confidential. Mainly, I want to ask you guys stuff about each other, but also stuff about yourselves as well as your friends, and you might start filtering your answers. Look, this isn't rocket science, and I'll spell it out for you. Shane, I want to talk to you about your relationship with Jenny, who was your lover, and I doubt any of the three of us wants Carmen in the room for that. Carmen, I need to talk to you about Shane, plain and simple. And some about Jenny.”

“Shane didn't kill Jenny,” Carmen said adamantly. Carmen and Shane looked at each other, Shane a bit embarrassed at how fiercely Carmen had defended her, but secretly pleased, too.

“That's beside the point,” Lauren said. “I simply don't want you in the room when I ask Shane about her sex life with Jenny. I don't want you there when she and I talk about both of them fucking Niki Stevens, who IS an active suspect.”

They both spoke at once. “We never had a threesome!” Shane protested angrily. “Who told you that?”

“You fucked Niki Stevens?” Carmen asked simultaneously, surprised and somewhat shocked. “You cheated on Jenny?”

“No one told me you had a threesome,” Lauren said, ignoring Carmen, “and I didn't mean to suggest it, Shane, although I'm glad we got it out of the way. No, the point is you both had active sexual relationships with Niki, nearly at the same time, and I need to know every relevant detail, because it directly bears on Niki's actions. And Carmen's reaction shows why we need to have this conversation by ourselves. No offense, Carmen.”

“None taken,” Carmen said, and then muttered, mostly to herself, “I can't believe you cheated on Jenny.”

“Carmen, please,” Shane said. “Let it go. It wasn't like that. I didn’t cheat on her.”

“Well, what was it like, then?”

Lauren wanted to break this up. “Guys, do we really need to do this? Can it wait for some other time?”

Carmen blew her breath out. “I’m sorry, Lauren. It’s been a tough day so far, I know for me, and I suspect Shane, too.” Shane looked at her hands, but they could read agreement there. “Can we pick this up tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Lauren said. “I’ve been pressing you two pretty hard. Tell you what, I should go back to my office and check messages and see what’s up. How about we start again in the morning? Do you want to meet for breakfast or meet at the office?”

“I’ve got a family commitment for breakfast,” Carmen said. “My mom invited my sisters over since I’m in town.”

“Okay, what about you, Shane? It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

Shane, slouched down in the booth, shrugged. “Sure, I guess. When and where?”

“What time’s good for you?”

“I’m a night owl, so noon would be good. So anything earlier is going to have to be okay. What kind of hours do you usually keep?”

“We have roll call at 7:30, so I’m good by 8. How about this, I’ll do some office work and meet you here at 9 for breakfast? I’ll be ravenous by then, and you’ll be half awake and craving coffee.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Shane said.

“Good. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“I’ll stop by here when I can,” Carmen said, “and if you’re here, that’s great, and if not I’ll pick up some coffee and come over to your office.”

“Great,” Lauren said, putting some money on the table. “This will cover my share. See you tomorrow.” She walked out of the restaurant, waving at the waitress and the cashier.

Shane and Carmen sat quietly across from each other, thinking about the day so far.

Finally Carmen broke. “I’m sorry. I know this is tough on you.”

Shane nodded. “I brought it on myself.”

“I wasn’t going to say that, but yes, you did. You started this process. And as difficult as it is, for what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing. We have to do this.”

“You really think that?”

“Yes.”

“Lauren thinks I did it. Killed Jenny. Duffy thinks so, too.”

“They don’t know you like I do.”

“Thanks.”

Shane had a frown on her face, and Carmen could read it. “What?”

“Huh?”

“There’s something else. Spit it out.”

Shane took a sip of iced tea, and moved things around inside her head. “I didn’t cheat on Jenny.”

“That’s what’s bothering you?”

“It was the way you said it, like … like … “

“Like the time you cheated on me.”

“Yes. Like that. Only I didn’t.”

“Okay.”

“What happened was, Jenny and Niki broke up a week earlier. Jenny told me all about it, swore that Niki was dead to her.”

“I remember you saying that.”

“Well, Jenny really meant it. There was no question about it, or about her being serious. She didn’t want anything more to do with Niki, even though it was Jenny who was treating Niki like shit. Jenny even bragged about it, she said she made Niki fuck her all night long and then Jenny kicked her out of bed in the morning, telling her it was over, she was just using Niki for sex.”

“Pretty harsh. No wonder Niki was pissed.”

“Yes, and of course Jenny put her spin on it, that Niki deserved it, blah blah, but she was rationalizing like crazy. Anyway, my point is, it was over. So, basically—“

“--Niki was fair game.”

“Right! Exactly. It happened a week later, there was this testimonial thing to honor Jenny, some bullshit thing to appease her, I guess, I don’t know. Anyway, Niki was coming on to me, and hell, why not, you know? So anyway, she and I were out on a balcony and Jenny was inside somewhere giving her speech, and you know, one thing led to another--”

“—And you went down on her.”

“Well … yeah.”

“Kinda like you went down on me the first time we met.”

Shane had nothing, and just flipped her hands.

“I’m sorry, I guess that sounded mean. I didn’t mean it that way. Well, I did and I didn’t.”

“Look, think what you want, but I didn’t cheat, okay?”

“Okay, I accept that.”

“So anyway, yes, I was going down on her, and Jenny came out on the balcony and discovered us. And she was pissed, for no good reason, as far as I’m concerned. Then she said something weird.”

“She told me. She said you had broken her heart.”

“Yeah. And how the fuck was I supposed to know that? I swear to God, that came out of the clear blue sky, like a thunderbolt. I broke her heart. Jesus motherfucking....”

They said nothing for a minute.

“Okay, look, I’m going to go,” Carmen said. “And this is awkward. Normally I’d invite you over to dinner at my mom’s, but, see, she’s … um …”

“She stilled pissed at me.”

“Yeah, you could say that. You could say if you so much as drove into the barrio she’d have your throat cut ear to ear. So yeah, she’s still pissed.”

“I understand.”

“You need a ride somewhere?”

“No, I’m good. I’ll catch a cab.”

“I heard you took over Alice’s apartment.”

“Yeah, I did. I couldn’t go back and live ... you know. Next to where it happened. So I told Alice I’d keep it warm for her, give it back to her when she gets out.”

“Ah, cool. Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Shane nodded, and watched Carmen walk past the tables and out into the afternoon sunlight. When she got home she was going to smoke a couple of joints until all the pain went away.


	6. You Broke My Heart

Lauren was halfway through her egg-whites-only Western omelet when Shane arrived at the restaurant and slumped down in the booth, the same one they’d had lunch in the day before.

“Is this booth permanently reserved for you?” Shane asked.

“Good morning,” Lauren said. “Didn’t get enough sleep, huh? No, this booth isn’t mine, it’s mainly Marybeth’s, but she lets me use it. We cops are very territorial, we like our routines and our turf clearly defined. One time we came in and found a bunch of Feebies camped out and we had to use a table. It ruined Marybeth’s whole morning.”

“Feebies?” Shane asked.

“FBI,” Lauren said. "LA field office." She raised a hand to signal the waitress. “You look like you need coffee, bad.”

“I do. I’m not a morning person. I’m barely an afternoon person.”

“I remember,” Lauren said. It was the first time she’d referred to their one-night stand a decade ago. Shane grunted. “I’m sorry that yesterday was so rough on you.”

“It can’t be helped,” Shane said.

“I’m glad you see that. Doesn't lessen the pain much, though.”

The waitress brought a menu but Shane didn’t need it. “Lox and bagel, toasted,” she said. “And a shmear. The works.”

“Plain bagel? We have onion, wheat, sesame, and everything bagel,” the waitress said.

“Everything,” Shane said. “Do you have V-8?”

“Small or large?”

“Large. And lots of coffee.”

“Hard night, huh?” the waitress said, sympathetically. “Coming right up.”

“She’s used to dealing with cops who’ve had hard nights,” Lauren said, “and she knows how to deal with them.”

“What’s her secret?”

“Ignore bitchiness and moodiness and grumpiness. And if you give her shit, she gives it back. Cops respect a little push-back, and if you stand up to their crap a little bit, at least if you aren’t handcuffed and a suspect.”

“Good to know. So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Couple things. For my general background, tell me about your business. My sources tell me you’ve been pretty successful.”

“Is it relevant?”

“Probably not. But I’m curious, and it helps me get to know you. Like Carmen said, that’s important.”

The waitress brought Shane’s lox and toasted bagel platter, and Lauren watched Shane assemble a sandwich. “Bless you, Harvey, wherever you are,” Shane said. “It was Harvey who taught me all about lox and bagels. You remember Harvey?”

“I didn’t know him, but I remember the day I had to tell you about his death in that traffic accident. I read his obit afterward.”

Shane took a big bite, chewed, closed her eyes in bliss. When she could talk, she said, “Okay, the story of my life, chapter ten. About a month after Jenny died I got a call from a guy named Chase. He owned a skateboard shop in Venice Beach called _Wax_ , and back when I was with Carmen he invited me to set up my own hairdressing shop in one of the bays, and he called it _Shane for Wax_. And it took off like crazy, mainly because Chase was such a great business guy. After two or three years the whole place burned down, it was arson, and it took a long time for the insurance company to finally decide Chase and I had nothing to do with it, and they paid up, so I got a sizable share of the settlement, and Chase got a much larger share because he was the majority owner.”

“The arson was never solved,” Lauren said.

“No, they never got anybody. But I know who did it. I knew from the night it happened.”

“You want to say who?”

Shane shrugged. “I still don’t _want_ to say it, but I will. I think it was a woman I had an affair with, named Paige. Paige Sobel. Our break-up – well, it didn’t go well, and she went a little off the deep end. When the arson investigators talked to me, they knew about her just from background checks on me. I didn’t outright accuse her, because I had no evidence other than my own gut feeling, and they flat-out asked me, and the best I could tell them was maybe.”

“You didn’t want to give her up?”

“Not exactly that, no. I mean, if I was absolutely dead sure it was her, and had some evidence, I would have, because I loved that place and I was a great friend of Chase and I sure owed him a lot. But I just didn’t have anything, and they knew about her anyway, so there was no point in me just jumping on the bandwagon without any evidence. And they wouldn't have the same faith in my instincts as Carmen does.”

“Okay. So after Jenny’s murder you got back in touch with Chase.”

“No, he got in touch with me, about a month after. I’m glad he did. I was in a lot of trouble. Mentally, I mean. Jenny’s … .” Shane took a minute to get it together. “Her death. I took it hard. She and Harvey and Dana, three people I was close to … .”

“Everybody says you feel things deeply. And it’s not surprising that somebody’s passing would affect you deeper than most. Of course, nobody faces the death of someone that close very well, we aren’t supposed to take it well. But I hear what you’re saying, you took it hard.”

“Right, thank you. Exactly. That’s what I’m no good saying, stuff like that. So yes, I was pretty fucked up. And one day out of the blue Chase calls me up and says ‘Hey, I’ve got a business proposition for you. You know how you specialized in sugaring instead of bikini waxing?’ And I said yes, what about it? See, Carmen was the one who taught me about it. Sugaring. And Chase says, ‘Let’s start a salon specializing in sugaring, with you out front as the spokesperson and main operator. We’ll call it _Shane’s Sugar Shack_.’ And he says he’s had some contacts with people out in the valley, you know, where there’s lots of porn film studios and stuff, and porn actresses, and he says there’s a billion bucks to be made sugaring all that twat--”

Lauren laughed and Shane grinned.

“Yeah, that’s how he said it. He says, ‘All the rich people out here have gardeners, right? Well, there’s a fortune to be made trimming the bushes,’ he says. ‘Like _Shane for Wax_ ,’ he says, ‘I’ll set it up, get the lease on a place, get you a shop set up. It’ll be a full-service salon, you’ll do hairdressing, too, but mainly you’ll do the sugaring and teach some assistants to do it, too. And who knows, if it takes off like I think it will, we’ll franchise, set up other salons around the region. Hollywood’s not much different than the valley where hairless pussy is concerned,’ he says – and keep in mind, this is a gay guy speaking, who has no interest whatsoever in pussy, shaved, hairy, trimmed or whatever. And you know how I am, I have to think things over a lot, like Carmen says – and he delivers the kicker. ‘Shane,’ he says, ‘don’t do this for the money, don’t do it for me. Do it for yourself. Do it because you need it. You have to get your head out of your ass and immerse yourself in a project. This is that project, and we both know you’ll be great at it. Shane,' he says, 'I can hire a thousand hairdressers and waxers and sugarpies and nail girls and whatever, but I can’t hire a stand-in for Shane McCutcheon. Only Shane McCutcheon can commit to this. So think it over and get back to me. Hey, good talking to you, and I’m really sorry about Jenny. So pull your head out of your sorry butt and let’s do something great together.' And he hangs up.”

“Sugarpies, I love that,” Lauren said. “Those are what you call your girls who do the sugaring.”

“Right. Chase’s idea, of course. It means both the girls who do the work as well as the sugared twats they work on. So anyway, despite what everybody says about me taking forever to process stuff, my gut, my instinct, right from the first moment was yes, go for it. But I dick around for an hour, waiting for some objection to pop up, and there’s nothing, so I call him back and I say, let’s go, when do I show up for work? And bang, it’s like a whirlwind. We go out to the valley and scout locations and look at a dozen places, we pick one, we do the lease and all that stuff. We agree on a 60-40 split, him the 60 and me the 40 because without him even asking, I put up my arson settlement money and my inheritance from Harvey and I become what he calls a fiduciary partner, so I’m not an employee, I’m a part owner, an investor. And we rent a lot of equipment, which ironically a lot of came from Jaffe-Samchuk and Associates, the real estate tycoons in the valley porn business, which is funny because those were two guys from my ancient history, and I once had a thing with Steve Jaffe’s wife. Maybe you’ve heard of her, she goes by Cheri Peroni now after the divorce--”

“Yes, I think I do know her, slightly, anyway. I think I once went on a disturbance call at their house, there was a wild party, too much noise. We took a guy out in handcuffs for drunk and disorderly. Cheri’s a big shot in town, and her daughter has been busted a couple of times. A messed-up rich kid with absentee parents, not exactly an unusual story in LA.”

“That’s Cleo. Yeah.”

Lauren didn’t say anything but arched an eyebrow.

“No, we didn’t,” Shane said quietly. “She wanted to. And then she told her parents we did, but we didn’t it, was a lie.” She sighed. “It was a mess. I see her around once in a while, in a club or someplace. As far as I’m concerned, she radioactive, she’s Kryptonite. We nod, we say hello, but there’s no fucking way. Sometimes when we get older we get smarter, you know? Not a lot smarter, but just a wee little bit. And she’s my wee little bit of stay away, stay far fucking away.”

“Learning curve,” Lauren said. They’d long finished eating and were on their second cup of coffee.

“Yeah. My curve probably isn’t near as curvy as it ought to be, but it does curve a little, it bends. It’s not a real good curve, kind of a squiggle with maybe some corkscrewing. Maybe a kink, here and there. But at least it’s not flat-lined.”

“Good to know. Back to _Shane’s Sugar Shack_.”

“So anyway, the place is booked solid and I’m working sixty, seventy hours a week, I’m coming home at ten, eleven at night and collapsing into bed with my clothes on. And here’s where Chase is a genius. I mean he is a pure , grade-A genius. He says, ‘I want to restrict you to about 15 hours a week doing sugaring on actual clients, and we may even dial it back further to ten hours. Mainly you’ll teach and mentor and help manage, be available on site to meet-and-greet and schmooze, and there will be a lot of off-site promotion, visiting studio people, telling them about our services. When you do a sugar job, we’ll charge a premium for your personal services, so we can bill your actual sugaring sessions sky-high because you’ll be very hard to schedule an appointment with.’”

“What’s ‘sky-high’ mean? Just curious.”

Shane grinned. “I’m glad you’re sitting down. I almost feel bad about what I charge. I get seven hundred bucks a session. That’s seven hundred an hour, more or less.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah. I’ve got a handful of personal clients, some very famous names in the porn industry and a couple from Hollywood, names you’d know, but client confidentiality, et cetera. Chase is very big on us being discreet. And those women, they don’t give a shit what I charge, because it’s a business expense, just like hairdressing or anything else they do that’s work-related, and it’s somebody’s tax write-off, the studio’s, or whoever. I mean, when my session is done they don’t even pay me or pay up at the register or anything, we do their billing separately, they can walk in the door without a dime in their pockets, so they really don’t give a shit, and somebody in the office bills them. I think there’s one or two clients who don’t even know what we charge. That was all Chase, too. I’d have never come up with that strategy in a hundred years. And Chase says, ‘Here’s another thing about keeping you hard-to-get. If you work too much, like you’ve been doing up to now, and if you do too many people, if you’re humping your ass off working forty, fifty hours a week, which you easily could be, you’ll burn out. You’ll go four, six months, and you’ll never want to look at another pussy ever again.’ Then he laughs and says, “Okay, maybe not you, but you’d never want to look at another pot of sugar mix or a sugar spatula, right? So we want you in this for the long haul. We need to keep you fresh.’”

“You’re right,” Lauren said. “He sounds like one sharp guy.”

“He is. And here’s another thing he did that takes my breath away. Even though I personally charge so much money, he tries really hard to keep the prices for all the other sugarpies down pretty reasonable. He did a ton of work getting competitive prices on waxing and other services, so we’d know what women were paying. And I said, so we undercut the price of waxing by five bucks, right? And he says no. He says we charge ten bucks more, just enough to keep us in the game, and we stress that we’re worth the extra five bucks because we’re way less painful, and five bucks more because we’re all-natural, we’re organic, but we’re still affordable. Not that a porn actress with silicon tits cares about all-natural, but a lot of the Hollywood women do. Or say they do. I mean, you stick the word organic on something, anything, you know? We even have a joke, maybe we should advertise as being gluten-free. But organic, that's all sugar and lemon are, right? So Chase says, ‘I don’t want a single customer to think about making a choice between us or a waxer and deciding on the waxer because it’s cheaper. I want them to decide on us because for the extra ten bucks they won’t be screaming in pain, they won’t walk away with a hot, irritated, raw, red pussy.’ And then he said two other things that were genius.”

“I’m all ears.”

“He says, ‘We’re not going to promote _Shane’s Sugar Shack_ as being mainly for porn stars. We aren’t even going to mention porn stars, even though they’ll be our bread-and-butter at first. We’re going to promote ourselves as being the shop for the average girl, the average woman, the girl on roller skates on Venice Beach boardwalk, the mainline Hollywood people and all the thousands of Hollywood wannabes working as waitresses and script girls and paralegals and whatever else they do while they’re waiting to become famous. Working girls waiting to be discovered, girls on a tight budget but who know they need the trim. That’s partly why we’ll charge reasonable, affordable prices.’ And he says, ‘And here’s the last thing. Women have hair lots of places, not just their pussies. And so we are going to learn how to do the best job we can with hair removal other places, arms, legs, armpits, eyebrows, women with those little moustaches they can’t get rid of, anyplace hair’s a problem. We are going to explore the outer boundaries of sugaring, see how far we can go with it. I don’t want us to get into laser removal, because that’s a whole different ballgame, but I want us to do the best we can, and if we can’t help a woman out, then we should be happy to refer them to lasering or whatever. But we want them to come to us first, we want to be the first place they think if they have a problem.’ So that was what he called our business model.”

“Wow,” Lauren said. “No wonder you’re so successful.”

“Yep. And that’s all Chase, one hundred percent. We opened a second shop at the other end of the valley, and then one in the heart of the Hollywood studios, one in Burbank, one in Venice. He’s looking at a couple other sites, even thinking about San Francisco and San Diego. So I spend a lot of time on the road, traveling from one shop to another, doing training and PR and stuff. And you know what Chase did? You ever see that movie, _The Lincoln Lawyer_ , the one about the criminal lawyer who does all his work from a car?”

“Sure. There was an actress in it looks a little bit like you.”

“Yeah, people tell me that. I don’t see it, but what the hell. Anyway, Chase has a car and a driver, and he operates like that, too, because he’s traveling around so much, pretty often with me, and we use all that down time in the car to make calls, have meetings, go over the books and schedules and shit like that. We both work out of his car when we’re not on site. I don’t even have an office, and he has one but he’s almost never in it.”

“What’s he say about you taking all this time for the investigation?”

“Oh, he’s cool with it. He knows what I’m doing and why, and he even knows and likes Alice. He says I’ve been working my ass off and I need some down time, away from the job, and so, if I’m gone a little while, _Shane’s Sugar Shacks_ and the sugarpies keep on clicking.”

“Well, good. And I’m glad your business has taken off so well.”

“Thanks. I wonder what’s keeping Carmen? She's Miss Punctuality.”

“I texted her this morning and asked her to give us a little more time together. I'm going to call her when we're done to set up the rest of our day.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“So let’s talk about the other thing I wanted to know about.”

“Me and Jenny.”

“Yes.”

Shane sighed, playing with her fingers.

“Need more coffee?” Lauren asked.

“No. Maybe some iced tea.”

Lauren held up her hand to signal the waitress, and they sat quietly until after it arrived.

“Jenny,” Shane said.

“Jenny,” Lauren said. “And you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with the basics. How long did you know her?”

“Mmm, six years, I guess. Since almost immediately after she and Tim moved out here. After they split I became her roommate. I lived with her about five years. There was a period of seven or eight months when she went back to Illinois. She became my best friend, she and Alice.”

“How long were you lovers?”

“Just the last month or two. There was nothing all that time before that. Never crossed my mind, frankly. I don’t think it ever crossed hers, either.”

“Until one day it did. Was that you or her?”

“Her. I never saw it coming. I … .”

“Yes?”

Shane slowly shook her head, still playing with her fingers. “It was weird, that last month or two. It’s like … I don’t know. This will sound crazy. It’s like I was hypnotized, or something. Like I had lost my willpower. I should never have started … you know. Sleeping with her. For one thing, it ruined a great friendship, and it’s not like I didn’t know that would happen. Ask anybody: For years I had, like, a motto, a mantra, that I don't fuck my roommates. All our friends, I know they think I lost my mind, Alice more than anybody, and you know, they were right, of course. I did lose my mind, I guess, but I can’t tell you why. I have no idea what happened. In my head, I mean. Or hers. Although I can tell you this much, Jenny kinda went slowly batshit crazy over the last year or two herself.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’m the last person who should be talking about psychology and stuff, because I don’t know anything about it—“

“I think Carmen and some other people would disagree. Go ahead, sorry I interrupted.”

“What I was going to say was, it’s been my experience most people are pretty stable, you know? They don’t change much. Sometimes that’s a problem, like with me. But most of the time it seems to be okay. Alice hasn’t changed one iota, she still the same old Alice she always was, and I love her to death, even though she seems all over the map. And she’s been through some tough losses, too, with partners. But the point is, she’s still the same woman I’ve known for a decade. Sure, high drama and high maintenance, but that's not the same as unstable, you know? Bette and Tina. They’ve been through a lot of shit, too, and maybe you could argue Tina drifts back and forth into bisexuality, but she’s been that way forever, always will be. Carmen is pretty much the same, straight ahead, steady as a rock, what you see is what you get. And I mean that as compliments.”

“Sure. But Jenny.”

“Yes. But Jenny.” Shane thought a moment. “She started off as this meek, clueless, innocent type, Tim’s girlfriend, straight as an arrow. Alice called her the Country Mouse, whatever that means, it's from a book, I think. But Jenny said she wanted to be a writer and she had all these demons, that’s what she called them. I don’t know if you know this, but she was raped, or sexually assaulted, back in Illinois when she was about ten or eleven years old. Carmen says that messed her up pretty good, and she never got any help or therapy, and I can’t disagree it messed her up, and shit, no, it’s not her fault. So anyway, turns out she has this real manipulative streak, and she was never innocent in spite of the image she projected. She sucked a lot of cock in high school and college, it turns out, despite this goody two-shoes image she had. And she could be sneaky, devious. And mean. Not to me, but to other people. Well, I guess to me, too, once. Finally one day she had this mental breakdown, Carmen and I found her in the bathroom, cutting her legs with a razor blade. That’s when we took her to the hospital and they put her in the psych ward for a couple days then she went back to Illinois for seven or eight months for treatment, she was in some kind of sanitarium or whatever they call them. Mental hospital, that’s what it was.”

“She had been going with Carmen right then?”

“Well, yes and no. They had broken up, that was Jenny’s doing, and she had pushed me and Carmen together. But I hear what you’re asking, and no, I don’t think her breaking up with Carmen had anything to do with her crack-up, I really don’t.”

“Okay. Her personality changed over the years.”

Shane furrowed her brows. “It’s hard to describe. She kept changing, little bits at a time. It’s like over the years she kept trying on new personalities, trying to figure out who she was. Not the lesbian thing, I don’t think that was an issue, at all. Or being a writer. If anything, those were the two most stable things about her, once she’d broken up with Tim, and got her orientation sorted out. She wasn’t like Tina or Alice, never bi, and she was never going back to the straight side, even for a quickie visit. But … everything else. She was very ambitious, right from the start, and it seemed to me the better she did, getting her books and stories published, the fame, and the screenplay, and then making that movie -- the deeper she got into that Hollywood world the crazier she got.”

“Success, fame, money and power have fucked up one helluva lot of people in this town. That's what this town does.”

“I know, I see it all the time. But the money part, although Jenny suddenly came into a lot of it -- and I mean a _real_ lot of it – I don’t think that changed her, not significantly. Sure, she spent it, bought expensive clothes, ate in fancy restaurants, bought herself a fucking Beemer. But I don’t see where money, by itself, was much of a factor. I mean, shit, when she was filthy rich she still lived in the same house with me when she could have moved to Malibu or some canyon place. It was the fame and the power and the glamour, the Hollywood shit. Celebrity. Being able to snap her fingers and have assistants kiss her ass. Dealing with bigwig publishers and bigwig studio people. Tina deals with them all the time, and it hasn’t made her crazy in the least. Bette deals with a lot of the same kind of people all the time, too, in the art world, and she handles it okay, just like Tina. Shit, Helena had money coming out her ears, and if anything she’s gotten a lot better over the years, not worse. She was a little, you know, hoity-toity and snooty and a bitch when I first met her, but over the years, she’s gotten, I don’t know, a lot more human, you know? And I gotta say, she’s become a real close friend, even though I don’t see her all that much. See, she has kids in England, and she’s always flying off to someplace fancy I never even heard of. But that’s okay. She’s got the bread, that’s cool, and she’d give you the shirt off her back. She financed our wedding thing up in Canada, spent a small fortune, never batted an eyelash. Even paid for Carmen’s family to come, airlines tickets, hotel rooms, the works. Helena’s been through some shit, too, and it’s made her a better person.”

“Okay. You and Jenny, you were roomies and BFFs a couple years, and then one day you wind up in bed.”

“Yeah. Never saw _that_ one coming, swear to god. I’d been going with Mollie, it was getting pretty serious, and then like I always do, I fucked it up and let it slip away. I can’t say I was over it, exactly, but, you know, I had moved on. Which I guess is just a way of saying I was fucking whoever came along, same as always.”

“Were you in love with Molly?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. I always seem to be the last person who knows I’m in love when I’m in love. Okay, that sentence doesn’t make any sense—“

“It’s okay, I know what you mean.”

“Yeah, I was in love with her. Close as I ever get, anyway. I have some issues, as you might have heard.”

“It’s been rumored,” Lauren said.

It made Shane laugh. “I bet. Anyway, Jenny. She was getting laid whenever she needed it, but nothing too excessive, nothing way out of hand, and then when they started casting and shooting the movie she started sleeping with Niki. And then they broke up, apparently Jenny treated her badly and Niki was pissed, and so she decided to come on to me right in the middle of this testimonial thing they were having for Jenny. We were out on the balcony, and, uh, you know … “

“Getting it on.”

“Yeah. Getting it on. I wasn’t fucking her, I told Jenny that, but it didn’t matter. I was, uh, well … . Shit. I was going down on her. And Jenny comes out on the balcony and Niki sees her and the first I know Niki’s yanking my hair. Jenny’s all spooky quiet, then she says ‘You broke my heart.’ At first I thought she’s talking about Niki, to Niki, that made some sense. But she’s looking at me, not Niki. And I’m like, how the fuck did _I_ break your heart? I’m only your roommate, your friend. Since when do you care who I fuck? And how many women did I fuck over those years we roomed together? I mean, how the fuck was I supposed to know she’s suddenly in love with me? Everybody says I have this fantastic gaydar and all that, but I swear, I was completely unable to read the woman I’d been rooming with for years. My own best friend.”

Lauren tapped her pencil on the table, thinking. “You said she could be manipulative and devious.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, do you think she meant it? Was she sincere? Was she really in love with you? Was she playing you for some reason? A mind-fuck game? Was she just trying to take you away from Niki? I think I’m asking, what do _you_ think was in her head?”

“Well, if she wasn’t sincere, she sure fooled the crap out of me. Because I’m still fooled.”

“Okay. Here’s comes the hardest of the hard part.”

“I didn’t do it,” Shane said.

“I wasn’t going to ask you that,” Lauren said. “You’ve already been asked and you’ve already said you didn’t, and there’s no point in repeating it just to hear ourselves talk.”

“But you think I did it,” Shane said.

“No. What I think is, I’m keeping an open mind, that’s all.”

“Marybeth thinks I did it.”

“Well, that’s hard to say. My opinion is she’s keeping an open mind, too.”

“Can I ask you something? Shane said.

“Sure. What?”

“Does this case bother her? Because I get nothing but bad vibes from her. I did way back when it happened, and every time I ever talked to her. You can deny it, but I know she thinks I did it.”

Lauren thought a long time. Finally she said, “Yes, this case bothers her. A lot.”

“Because you guys put the wrong person in jail.”

“We didn’t put that person in jail. She put herself in jail. But yes, Marybeth and I both believe the wrong person is in jail. And worse, we believe the real murderer got away with it, and that’s what really sticks in her craw. And maybe it’s a character flaw a lot of good cops have, but yes, we tend to care a lot more about bad guys who are still out than wrongly convicted good guys who are in. Maybe because the court system isn’t part of our jurisdiction, but making arrests is.”

“I interrupted you. I’m sorry. What were you going to ask? The worst part, you said.”

“I want to ask you about your motive for killing Jenny. I’m not saying you did do it, I’m not. But you have to admit you had motive, and that’s what I want to discuss. About why you were so mad at her. People seem to think it was because she stole the negatives and hid them in the attic, but there’s something in the file about a jacket and a letter.”

“Yeah,” Shane said.

“Yeah? Can you be a little more forthcoming?”

“What happened was, I was in love with Mollie. I think so, anyway, as close as I seem to get to it, like we just said. I think she was in love with me. But her mother was the problem. See, Molly was – she is – very, very smart, super smart, smartest person I ever met by a long shot, at least book-smart. Carmen's really smart, too, but in a different way. Anyway, Molly wanted to be a lawyer, and even more, her mother _really_ wanted her to be a lawyer. She got some real high score in some test to get into law school--"

“The L-SATs?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. But whatever it was, Mollie finished in the top two percent, her mother told me. And because of that and maybe with some connections and her mother pulling strings, Mollie got this special internship at the Supreme Court in Washington that her mother was totally set on that Mollie should go. And Mollie just wanted to take the summer off, and just go surfing, and, well, hang out with me. That’s what she wanted. First I even heard about the internship was at lunch with Molly and her mother, and I don't know jackshit about the Supreme Court, I had no idea just how important that was. They got into it a little bit, and Mollie basically told her mother she wasn’t going to Washington. And I'm sitting there and I have no clue what they're arguing about except I seem to be in the middle of it but fuck if I know how. That was the same morning I told Mollie I loved her. So that same evening there’s this big art gallery event that Bette and Tina asked me to come to, and I went, and Mollie’s mother is there, too. Anyway, her mother – Phyllis is her name – takes me aside and tells me that I’m not worthy of Mollie. I had even heard them arguing about me once before, and Phyllis said she thought I was stupid. And then Mollie--”

“Yes?”

“Mollie kind of agreed with her, but then she said she just didn’t care whether I was smart or not. That hurt a little, but Mollie and I talked about it, and it was okay. I’m telling this all out of order.”

“It’s all right. I’m following. Go on. There’s this art gallery thing.”

“Right. So Phyllis says to me, ‘You’re not worthy of her.’ Right in my face. I say, ‘Excuse me?’ And Phyllis starts throwing the book at me, quoting Bette and Alice and all about my history. She throws Carmen at me, that the longest relationship I ever had was six months. Which is wrong because it was eight months. But anyway, she says I proposed to Carmen and then left her at the altar, which, I’m ashamed to say is true. And she says that’s what I’ll do with Mollie, too. She said some piece of ass would come along and next thing you know … well … . It was ugly. And it hurt because I didn't leave Carmen at the altar because of a piece of ass, that's totally wrong. It was like Phyllis was stripping the skin off me, and I couldn’t do anything, say anything. Then she delivered the … whadaya call it? The coo something.”

“Coup de gras. The death blow.”

“Yeah, that. She says I’m bad news. She says what am I gonna do, throw Mollie in the trash, too. Meaning like Carmen. Am I gonna throw her out like a piece of garbage? That’s the words she used. Throw her out like a piece of garbage.”

Shane had to stop a minute to collect herself.

“She says what am I going to do when somebody else comes along and I can’t keep it my pants, her words again. Keep it in my pants. And I got nothing. I said nobody could predict what would happen, which even I know is pretty lame. She says most people have some self-knowledge, and did I ever hear of someone saying about the past is prelude. I said no, I hadn’t heard of it, and of course she’s making me feel stupid, that’s her whole point all along, that I’m some fucking high school drop-out and her daughter’s a genius.”

“That’s pretty tough,” Lauren said.

“Tell me about it,” Shane said. “Except it’s true, every fucking word, except why I left Carmen. Oh, and you know what’s funny? A few days later I looked it up on the Internet. Past is prelude. And I couldn’t find it. Nothing. So I asked Alice. And Alice says, ‘No, Shane, that’s wrong. The quote is wrong. It’s “The past is prologue.” It’s Shakespeare.’ And I look it up again, and Alice is right. It’s William Fucking Shakespeare. From a play called “The Tempest.” See, Phyllis, this university chancellor and know-it-all who thinks I’m stupid, she’s the one who totally fucked up a Shakespeare quote.”

“You and Alice must have had a good laugh.”

“No,” Shane said. “I started to cry. And Alice wouldn’t let me alone until I told her the whole thing. I think I need some more iced tea.”

They got refills.

“Anyway," Shane said, “Phyllis delivers the knock-out punch. If you think you love her, she says, spare her. Don’t turn her into another one of your heartbroken victims. And she walks away.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. So after the gallery thing a couple hours later I’m at this club and all the gang is there, and I’m dancing with Mollie. And I’ve been thinking about everything Phyllis had said. And … so … I did it.”

“Did what?”

“Same thing I did with Carmen, at the beginning when I thought I was in danger of falling in love with her. I … I deliberately fucked it up. I asked Mollie to go get me a drink at the bar, and when she came back I was flirting with some girl I vaguely knew. And just like Carmen did, Mollie asks me what the fuck I’m doing. They didn’t say it that way, but that’s what they meant. What’s going on? Why are you flirting with some skank when I’m standing right here? And I basically say what I said to Carmen, you know, hey, let’s not take this too seriously, blah blah. And Molly says, you made me promises, and I said, no, I didn’t, and she says, yes you did, in bed this morning, those were promises. She’s dead right, of course. And she says something like, 'Is this where the girl throws her drink in your face?' And I said something snotty, and she walks away and it’s over.”

“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” Lauren said.

“You remember Harvey, the guy I was living with, who died in that accident?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Harvey loved music, and he taught me about that musical, _Man of La Mancha_? And about Don Quixote, who makes this grand gesture of self-sacrifice? Well, that’s what I did with Carmen, and with Mollie. They were better off without me. It’s as simple as that.”

“Nothing is ever as simple as that,” Lauren said.

Shane shrugged. “Point is, I deliberately fucked it up. To save them. From me. I’m not saying it was the best way, but it was the only way I knew how, and it worked, that’s all. It worked. The very next night was the wrap party for Jenny’s movie. Everybody’s there. And I’m wandering around and feeling sorry for myself, and I find Niki there, all alone, and she’s down in the dumps, too. And … I start flirting with her. She’d broken up with Jenny, like, ten days earlier. Jenny said Niki was dead to her, I told you that already.”

“I know. Go on.”

“So, you know, it gets dark and the wrap party is going full blast, and me and Niki, we’re out on this pagoda porch thing, all by ourselves, and we start making out, and, well, it’s kinda like with Carmen that very first time. We’re hot for each other, there’s no strings on anybody, you know? And … I go down on her. Like I did Carmen.”

“History repeats itself. That seems to happen a lot with you.”

“You have no idea,” Shane said. “That’s when Jenny finds us. I’m on my knees with my face in Niki’s pussy. I can honestly say that wasn’t history repeating itself. That was a new one, even for me. Getting caught, I mean. Not eating pussy.”

Lauren tapped her pen on the table, thinking. “You were out on the balcony with Niki, so you didn’t hear Jenny’s speech at the wrap-up party.”

“I didn’t even know she was giving a speech. I found out later that's what she was doing.”

“No one told you about it? Afterward, I mean?”

“No. Why?”

“You don’t know what she said?”

“No idea. What?”

“We got this story from two different people, Tina and Alice, and they pretty much agree. It started with the usual stuff you might expect. And then she asked if Niki was there. And somebody said she was out in the pagoda, that porch you were on. And then Jenny says she has something really important to tell Niki – that’s she’s in love with somebody. And everybody applauds, and they think she’s talking about her being in love with Niki.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“She wasn’t talking about Niki. But she wanted to rub it in Niki’s face. Humiliate her some more only this time in front of everyone. She wanted to tell Niki she was in love with you. And she wanted all of Hollywood to know it. To know it wasn't Niki, that she had rejected Niki in favor of you.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Yeah, well. Pretty twisted, that’s my opinion. Manipulative. Sadistic.”

“Oh, my God. And there I was ---“

“Uh huh.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Uh huh.”

“She threw me out. That night. Jenny threw me out of the house. Threw my clothes out onto the porch. We’d been living together for five, six years, except that one time when she went back to Illinois.”

“Tell me about Mollie’s letter.”

“I don’t have it.”

“I know. It’s in the evidence box.”

“Then you read it.”

“I did. But I’d like to hear you talk about it.”

“Not much to tell. She said she was sorry about what her mother said, it was wrong to say, she says, and it was wrong as fact, because I’m not stupid, she says, just different in how I process stuff. I’m guessing Alice or somebody told her that. And then she says I opened up new horizons for her. Made her think about things differently. I think she meant being a lesbian, but other stuff, too, I’m not sure.”

“‘In your eyes, I see things I know I can’t touch, I know not to reach for them, I let them touch me, and I cherish these moments, that we’re able to share, however fleeting they may be,’" Lauren quoted.

“Jesus, you really did read it, didn’t you?” Shane said.

“A line like that, you have to commit it to memory.”

“Except I didn’t.”

“It’s not your thing,” Lauren said kindly. “So. You climbed the ladder in the closet looking for the jacket and letter, and you found them, and saw the film canisters. What was going through your mind?”

“I wanted to fucking kill her.”

There was silence.

“Guess that sounds bad. I don’t care. You want me to tell you stuff, I’m telling you.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been that angry at anyone in my entire life. Carmen says I don’t get angry, that I turn my anger inwards against myself. I don’t know if that’s true. Carmen’s usually right, so I’ll take her word for it. But if Jenny had walked into that closet right at that moment, I …” Shane went speechless, and turned her head away.

“Okay,” Lauren said quietly.


	7. Scene of the Crime

Carmen, barefoot and wearing cut-offs and an oversize Cal U. sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up, was curled up on the couch between her mother Mercedes, and her grandmother, Abuela, when her cell phone buzzed. They were watching an episode of the _Ellen DeGeneres Show_ Mercedes had TIVO’d.

Ever since she had come to terms with her own beloved youngest daughter’s lesbianism shortly before the aborted wedding in Canada, there was no bigger fan of Ellen DeGeneres than Mercedes Morales. Or of _Will and Grace_. Tears streaming down her face, Mercedes devotedly watched reruns of _Hospital Central,_ the medical drama on the Spanish TV station Telecinco, where Esther García, the hospital’s chief nurse, became friends – and then lovers – with the new _lesbiana_ pediatrician Maca Fernández Wilson. At the end of the 2005 season, just as Carmen and Shane were becoming lovers, Esther and Maca were married, the first gay/lesbian wedding on Spanish television. It didn’t matter to Mercedes, who at the time refused to watch the show because of the story line. But the first time she saw the wedding in reruns several years later, she cried all afternoon. And then the unthinkable happened: Esther cheated -- and with a man! – and got pregnant! Mercedes was furious! That bitch! And she could hardly blame Maca for cheating herself, with the psychiatrist Veronica “Vero” Sole. After Esther and Maca broke up, the Maca-Vero relationship solidified. Well, who could blame them? Still, Mercedes held out hope … and it looked like Maca and Esther might be getting back together …

In countless e-mails, text messages, telephone calls and the occasional letter, Mercedes kept Carmen informed of every plot twist and turn. True love, Carmencita, true love. In this world, anything is possible. You never know, _mi carita_. But she could never overtly talk to Carmen about getting back together with Shane; Carmen wouldn’t hear a word of it. It was the Reconciliation That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

“Hey, Lauren,” Carmen said, answering her cell phone.

“Hi. You busy?”

“No, just hanging out with my mom and Abuela, watching TV. What’s up? How’d the talk with Shane go?”

“Uh, okay, I guess. I was a little rough on her. She took it as well as can be expected. Listen, want to take a ride with me?”

“Okay, sure. Where to?”

“Tina and Bette’s house.” There was a long silence on the line. “Carmen?”

“I’m here.”

“I know, it's a major downer,” Lauren said quietly. “But please consider two things. First, I’ve never been there, and I need to go with one or the other of you to show me around. Even if it weren’t for this morning’s session, I don’t think it should be Shane. You’re a lot tougher emotionally than she is. I know you won’t fall apart. Second, it’ll give us a chance to have our private talk.”

“Yeah, okay, I understand. You have keys? Doesn’t somebody live there?”

“Yes, I called and got permission to come over. They’re okay with us looking around. How’s half an hour?”

“Fine.”

“See you soon.”

* * *

Carmen changed into a pair of non-holey jeans and a teal polo shirt with the name of Olivia Cruise Lines embroidered on it, and was standing at the curb when Lauren pulled up in her white Miata convertible.

“Nice,” Carmen said, admiring the car. “It’s you.”

“Hop in,” Lauren said. Her sunglasses were perched on top of her head. She was wearing jeans, a man’s shirt and a pale blue blazer. “Like my outfit? It’s my Don Johnson look. Everybody says I dress like _Miami Vice_.”

“They’re right, you do. Can you come in for a minute? My mom would like to meet you.”

“Uh, okay, sure,” Lauren said, turning off the ignition. “I don’t usually get taken to meet the parents until after I fuck somebody.”

“Fuck you and shut up,” Carmen whispered, laughing. “Don’t talk like that! My mom is suspicious enough as it is, without anyone giving her ideas. And there’s no fucking way I’m dating a homicide detective.”

“Missing persons, ex-homicide, but okay. As we cops in the Missing Persons Bureau like to say, you don’t know what you’re missing. I’ll be on my best cop behavior,” Lauren said as they went up the walk. “Want me to flash my badge? Draw my gun?”

“I can see this isn’t going to go well,” Carmen murmured, opening the door and ushering Lauren in. “Hey, Mom?” she called out, “Lauren’s here.”

“In the kitchen,” Mercedes called out.

“Follow me,” Carmen said. “Don’t draw your cannon yet.”

Mercedes was standing in front of the stove, stirring a very large pot of something that smelled spicy and divine. She wore a flowered print dress, as she usually did, and an apron over it that said “Kiss the Cook” in Spanish.

“Wow, that smells incredible!” Lauren said, coming forward to shake hands with Mercedes. “Hi, I’m Lauren Hancock.”

But it wasn’t going to be a handshake, of course. Mercedes put down her spoon and wrapped Lauren in a smothering hug.

“Detecteeve Lauren! Hallo, hallo! I hear so much about you! Welcome to my kitchen!”

“In the entire LA barrio, this kitchen is considered to be Ground Zero, the center of the known Hispanic and Latino universe,” Carmen said, laughing as Lauren was unfolded and released.

“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Lauren said. “That’s the biggest pot I’ve ever seen on a stove.”

“Mom only cooks food in two kinds of pots,” Carmen said, laughing. “Cauldrons and vats. She’s never heard of a sauce pan.”

“After you do your visit you will come back for dinner tonight?” Mercedes asked. “I think we can squeeze out a little bit of chili for you, and maybe a chicken bone for my Carmencita.” She winked broadly.

“You must understand that you can’t refuse,” Carmen told Lauren. “An invitation from my mom for dinner carries the force of an all-points bulletin from the FBI, Homeland Security and Interpol. The only person who ever refused her dinner invitation was never seen again. We suspect he's in the Witness Protection Program.”

“Missing persons are right down my alley,” Lauren laughed. “Okay, okay, dinner it is. And if I have a guilty pleasure, it’s Tex-Mex in general and chili in particular.”

“Oh, jeez,” Carmen moaned. “That means mom’s going to make you leave with a couple gallons of leftovers.”

“I will not resist,” Lauren said. “Mercedes, we’ll be back in time for dinner, I promise, and with hearty appetites.”

“I will hold you to it,” Mercedes said, brandishing her wooden spoon.

* * *

“Your mom is something,” Lauren said as they drove away.

“She’s a force of nature,” Carmen said. They stopped for coffee to go and as they drove away from the 7-11 Lauren flicked the radio on, not too loud so they could talk if they wanted to. But Carmen was comfortable lost in her own thoughts. After a few minutes Lauren took her eyes off the road and looked over at her, then back at the road. A few minutes later she did it again.

“Something wrong?” Carmen asked.

“Huh? No.”

Carmen let a block go by.

“What is it you want to ask me?”

Lauren drove another block.

“That story about you and Shane. That you were engaged to be married, and that you went up to Canada, and she left you at the altar.”

“I'm sure that's all in a file somewhere,” Carmen said. “You must have heard it from just about everyone you talked to. Shane McCutcheon, Runaway Bride. Or groom. The terminology is a little fuzzy. But you already knew it's true.”

“Yes.”

“So why did you ask?”

Lauren drove another block.

“Because I wanted to hear you talk about it, even if you just told me to go fuck myself. I wanted to get a reading on what you feel about it. How you've come to terms with it.”

“It's ancient history, that's all.”

Lauren drove two miles. “I'm sorry,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road.

“Don’t worry about it,” Carmen said. “It's your job to ask questions.”

“No, that's not what I meant. I meant ... I'm sorry it didn't work out. The wedding. I'm sorry you didn't get married. I'm sorry you got hurt. You seem like a nice person. Everybody I talked to says that. I think you really loved her. Everybody says that, too. Maybe you still do love her, that’s the part I can't say. I'm beginning to suspect she still has feelings for you, for what it's worth. I think she really fucked up, and she knows it. I don't mean just screw up the wedding, embarrass herself and humiliate you, bad as all that is. I mean she knows she screwed up to let somebody like you get away. Man, that's crazy. And ... to hurt you. So ... what I meant was, I'm sorry it didn't work out, for both of you, and that you got hurt. That's all.”

Carmen let a block go by. “Thank you.” She let two blocks go by. “I have a loaded, intrusive question of my own, and please feel free to tell me it’s out of line. But I’m curious how you met Shane way back when.”

“She didn’t tell you?” Lauren asked. “I’m a little surprised.”

“No. One of the things you may not know about Shane is how well she keeps secrets, how discreet she is, by nature. She hates to talk about her own history even at the best of times. And I didn’t ask her about you because I figured it wasn’t any of my business. I figure you either arrested her or slept with her. Or both. Things are difficult enough between Shane and me as it is, but at least we’ve agreed to call a truce so we could team up to help Alice. Anyway, I would never have asked her about one of her old conquests. I mean, shit, where would I start?”

“No, she didn’t tell me much about her life story, either. We mainly talked about Jenny.”

“It isn't just you she won’t discuss her history with, it's everybody,” Carmen said, “so don't take it personally. Even if it isn't about sex. She’ll barely tell you she was born in Texas, and she wouldn’t show you where Texas was on a map. That’s TMI. It's harder than pulling teeth, it's root canal. Alice says Shane has slept with nearly a thousand women, and Alice was Shane’s official scorekeeper. Out of that thousand or so women, I know some vague details about exactly two of her old girlfriends, three if you count Jenny. And one of those three Shane didn't even sleep with, because she was eight years old at the time. The only one besides Jenny I really know anything about was the one Shane cheated on me with, and that was Cherie Jaffe Peroni. I’ll give Shane this much: She’s no gossip.”

“But you know about Harvey?” Lauren asked.

“Yes, I do know about Harvey. He's the one who saved her. Turned her around.”

“Well, the way I first met Shane was I didn’t arrest her,” Lauren said. “It was the day Harvey died. I was one of the officers they sent out to Harvey's house to break the news to the next of kin. But there was no kin, only Shane. She identified herself as just a tenant, and that Harvey was her landlord, and she did some chores and stuff for her room and board. The way she said it was like she didn’t have much of a relationship with Harvey, other than tenant and landlord. But then the way she immediately broke down crying. My first thought was bullshit, honey, you’re fucking him. Younger girl, rich older sugar daddy, all that. But I didn't pick up that vibe, and when Shane said she and Harvey were gay, I believed her. For some reason I always seem to believe her.”

“Shane’s like that,” Carmen said. “I’m trying to think if she ever told a flat-out lie, but I don’t think she ever did, not to me. She doesn’t say much, but you always believe her.”

“Anyway, I was the one who had to tell her Harvey was dead, jackknifed tractor-trailer on the 405. And from the way she reacted I could tell there was more to it than just her landlord had died.”

“She was crushed,” Carmen said.

“She was. She cried. She lost it. It was heart-breaking, but then again, telling people that kind of news always is.”

“What did you do?”

“Just held her. Let her cry, until she got through the initial part. Then after a while she pulled it together, and Larry and I took her into the house.”

“Larry?”

“My patrol car partner and training officer, not significant-other partner. We took Shane inside, and she made us a pot of coffee, and she helped us contact Harvey's lawyer and agent and various family members in New York. We stayed with her until a friend came over to take care of her.”

“Alice?”

“The Alice in jail? No, not her. This was an older woman, about sixty years old, named Carol.”

“Oh. That was her shrink.”

“Her shrink? I didn't know. Neither of them ever said.”

“Carol was Harvey's shrink after Harvey's partner committed suicide. And then when Harvey rescued Shane after the rape, Carol became Shane's therapist.”

“Shane was raped?”

“Yes.”

There was silence as two blocks went by.

“There's nothing in Shane's file about it. Did it happen in Texas or someplace?”

“No. It was in LA. She never reported it. You know how that story goes. Just another unreported rape.”

“When did this happen?”

“About eight or nine months before Harvey was killed.”

“How'd she know Harvey? That seems ... well, I never did get a good handle on that. How they linked up.”

“I guess that's not in Shane's file, either,” Carmen said.

Lauren looked over quickly, not sure if Carmen was making some kind of point. She didn’t seem to be.

“Shane's police record was totally clean when Harvey died. Which is to say, there was no record. She'd never gotten into trouble. Not so much as a parking ticket.”

“Until Harvey, she didn’t know how to drive, and didn't have a car. Imagine being car-less in Los Angeles, of all places. At any rate, she had been in trouble with the law, but she was using a fake name. You probably do have a file on her somewhere, you just don't know about it.”

“Can I ask what she'd done?”

Carmen shrugged. “Mostly she just got hassled, she never did any serious jail time, just a couple of overnights and got kicked out in the morning. Vagrancy, suspicion of prostitution, suspicion of drugs. She got released on her own recognizance once, she said. She was a runaway from some foster home in or near Austin and hitchhiked from Texas to Hollywood. She was this dirt-poor, drug-abusing, gay, homeless, malnourished runaway, just like a million other street kids. She was boyish-looking, she had that andro punk thing going a lot more than she does now, and she could pass for a gay guy. So to survive she and this actual, real gay guy she hooked up with started turning tricks on Santa Monica Boulevard, giving gay men hand jobs for twenty bucks a pop. When she got picked up by the police she had no ID except her street name, so that's what her file probably has, the street name she was using. You better slow down or pull over to the curb. You'll laugh so hard when I tell you you'll put us into a light pole.”

“Go ahead, I can probably handle it,” Lauren said, although she involuntarily took her foot off the accelerator.

“Tommi Hilfiger,” Carmen said. Lauren did laugh, a nice hearty hoot Carmen liked. “She spelled Tommi with an 'i' at the end. And she told me somebody at a shelter didn't know who Tommy Hilfiger was, so her name in the sign-in book became Tommy Hellfinger, Tommy with a 'y.' Hell like in go to Hell, and finger like give you the finger. Which she actually liked. So somewhere in an LAPD archive in a basement somewhere you have a file for a 19-year-old gay male prostitute suspect named Hellfinger, comma Thomas NMI. And even more ironic is the fact that except for the actual rape itself, Shane never blew a guy, or fucked one, or took it in the ass from a chickenhawk. Handjobs, yes, but nothing else. That part about the handjobs, she blanks that out as though it never happened. It hardly even qualifies as sex at all, and she was in extreme survival mode. In her heart she’s a pure, certified, one-hundred percent Gold Star, and I can’t disagree.”

“No one with any sense would. So how's Harvey come into this story?”

“Harvey was one of her johns. He treated her decently, and even took her to lunch a couple times.”

“Lunch? You fucking kidding me?”

“Nope. There's a long story behind it, but basically Harvey was a nice, lonely, gay guy whose partner had recently committed suicide. He couldn’t help noticing Shane was this starving, anorexic, street kid and he felt sorry for her, so one day after a handjob he bought her a sandwich. Of course, he thought she was a he, but still, it was a nice thing to do. And so when Shane was kidnapped and raped for two days by a couple of her johns she was really in bad shape, beat up and punched a couple times, and had a concussion. She didn’t know how to contact her gay street friend and he’d have been useless, anyway. Harvey was the only other person she knew, so she called him. And he came and rescued her, and took her to a private doctor, took her in, gave her a place to live, got her into rape counseling. That was Carol, Harvey’s shrink and then hers. Then Harvey got her into hairdresser school, bought her an old pickup truck. He pretty much did a total makeover on her, in fact. Changed her life, that's for sure. Cleaned her up, got her off the street and out of the life, taught her lots of stuff, socialization skills, proper table manners, all kinds of things. He was basically the first and only father she's ever had.”

“See, I never knew any of that. And like you say, none of it’s in her jacket.”

Carmen lapsed into a deep silence.

* * *

Lauren approached West Hollywood from the south, heading up San Vicente Boulevard, passed Cedars-Sinai on her left, and a few blocks later turned left onto Ashcroft, then a quick right onto 14th Street, a quiet residential street lined with trees and parked cars. The street was only three blocks long in this part of Los Angeles, and near the end of the second block she pulled over in front of the two houses at numbers 254 and 256 14th Street. She turned off the ignition.

Carmen looked at the two modest bungalows that had become a major part of her life for two years. “Haunted houses,” she said quietly, and not moving. “Speaking of ghosts.”

Lauren got out, closed her door quietly, walked to the curb, and stood on the sidewalk midway between them. She propped her sunglasses up on top of her head, Don Johnson Miami Vice, studied the two houses, then turned, making a 360 of the neighborhood. “Nice,” she said. “Quiet. I could live here.”

Carmen got out of the Miata. She scanned the house she had lived in. “I see my roses are gone.”

“What?”

“My roses. I planted that front flower bed with roses. They’re gone now.” Someone had replaced the flower bed Carmen had carefully and tenderly nurtured and replaced it with white river rocks and an assortment of cactus and succulents. Then she looked over at Tina and Bette’s house. “I knew they had added that whole second floor,” Carmen said, “but this is the first time I’ve seen it.”

Lauren turned and looked at her. “You going to be okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Let’s get this over with. Which one first?”

“Let’s go to Tina and Bette’s,” Lauren said, leading the way up the walk to the front door, where she rang the doorbell. She retrieved her badge folder from the side pocket of her blazer and placed it in the breast pocket so the badge faced outward. In a moment a woman answered the door. She was in her forties, wore glasses, and was dressed in flannel pajamas and slippers.

“Hi,” she said, smiling. “You must be Detective Hancock, we talked on the phone. I’m Gladys Wilkinson. Come in, come in.”

When Carmen came in she smiled at Gladys, offering her hand. “Hi, I’m Carmen Morales, nice to meet you. I used to live next door, back in the day. Thanks for letting us look around.”

“Sure, help yourselves,” Gladys said. “Please forgive my pajamas. I’m an ER nurse over at Cedars, I work nights and I’m going to bed in a little while. But you aren’t disturbing me, feel free to look around anyplace you want, ask me anything you want. You want to see out back first?”

“Sure,” Lauren said. “I understand you bought the house directly from Tina Kinnard and Bette Porter, is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Gladys said as they entered the kitchen. “They put it on the market because they were moving to New York, and I had a small rental I was sharing with some other nurses, and I was looking to move closer to the hospital. When it came on the market I knew it would get snapped up, and I was lucky, working nights I was available to come right over about an hour after it was listed and the computer popped it out to my real estate buddy. It was like a race to see who got here first.”

“This was before the murder happened?”

“Yes, right before. I looked at the house, told Tina and Bette I wanted it, and we shook hands on it. Then, it was a few days later the murder happened.”

“That didn’t bother you?” Lauren asked.

“Me? No. It might have freaked out a lot of people, living where a murder occurred, but hell, I’m an ER nurse, you know. I’ve seen it all. I guess you have, too.”

Lauren nodded.

Carmen stood quietly at the entrance to the kitchen, lost in memories. She looked over at the sink under the back window, where she had stood in her tiny white bikini, washing a ladle and eavesdropping on the conversation between Alice, Helena and Bette during a pool party they’d held when Dana had come home from the hospital after her radical double mastectomies from the cancer that had finally killed her. Alice, Helena and Bette were plotting to get Carmen to drop her bikini bottoms so they could finally get a peek at Carmen’s famous but heretofore hidden pubic tattoo, her famous flower boxes. There was no way Carmen was going to tell these two women that story. Nor could she tell them about the four or five times she and Shane had babysat Angelica in this house, making love in the living room on the couch while the baby slept peacefully in her crib. She thought about the week Bette’s father Melvin had been brought here to die, and how she and Shane had helped Bette and Tina with hospice care that week, and during and after the funeral. She remembered how she’d chatted with Gloria Steinem in this very room at the reception after the funeral.

Lauren turned to her, her hand on the kitchen door leading out to the back yard. “Ready?”

“Yes,” Carmen said. “Go.”

Lauren opened the double French doors and the three of them walked outside into the backyard. To the right was the stairway up to the second-story deck, and in front of them was the swimming pool. The stairway had two steps up to a small landing, then twelve steps to the top.

Gladys stood next to Carmen, both their arms folded, while Lauren walked over to the sidewalk between the pool and the stairs. She put her hand up on the stair rail, feeling its strength. It seemed solid.

“Were you here that night?” Gladys asked quietly.

“No,” Carmen said. “I live in San Francisco, and I work on cruise ships. I was 800 miles out into the Pacific when it happened.”

“But you knew her?” Gladys asked.

“Yes, I knew her. We were, you know, involved, at one point, but that was three years earlier.”

“I see. I’m very sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m ashamed to admit I forgot her name. I knew it at the time, I read all about it.”

“Jenny. Her name was Jenny Schecter. She had moved out here from Illinois, with her boyfriend. They were the tenants of the house next door, that’s how they met Tina and Bette. Then Jenny broke up with her boyfriend, and, you know, she had some other relationships, and then one day there was her and me, in a relationship. And that’s how I met Bette and Tina and everybody.

“Everybody?”

“Well, there was a whole group of us. Tina and Bette, Jenny, our friend Alice, a woman named Helena, another woman named Shane who was Jenny’s roommate, a woman named Moira, who was transgender, so she's a he now. There was Bette’s sister, Kit. Do you know who Dana Fairbanks was, the tennis player who died from breast cancer?”

“Oh, I remember her. She was a friend of yours?”

“Yes, she was. One time we had a pool party for her right here when she came home from the hospital.”

“I see. I guess this place has a lot of memories for you.”

“Yes, it does. In fairness, not all of them are bad ones. We had some good times here. Great times. Pool parties. Cook-outs. Skinny dipping at night--”

Gladys laughed.

“Like I said, Jenny’s roommate was named Shane. She and I were having a relationship, and one day Jenny had a nervous breakdown, and went home to Illinois for six months, to recover. So I moved in next door with Shane. I lived next door for eight months. So we were over here all the time. We babysat for Tina and Bette’s daughter--”

“Angelica!” Gladys said. “I remember her. She was so adorable.”

“She was, she still is. Bette and Tina e-mail me photos all the time. She’s a little ballet star in New York, now.”

They had watched Lauren climb up and down the stairs, testing the strength of the handrails, as though one that had been there the night of the murder, instead of just a yellow caution tape. Lauren had walked all the way around the pool, was standing near the back lot line, looking at the house and making notes in her small notepad.

“Does it bother you to talk about, you know ... Jenny.”

Carmen shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“I was never real clear on what happened.”

“They found her floating in the pool, drowned. She had been standing on the deck. The second story had just been added, and the carpenters hadn’t finished the railing, there was just a ribbon or tape. Somehow or other Jenny fell through the tape onto the sidewalk, and somehow rolled or was pushed into the pool. She had a head injury. I don’t know if it was from the fall or somebody hit her over the head, or what. Maybe Lauren knows if the autopsy could determine it, but I don’t know. But anyway, she wound up in the pool, unconscious, and she drowned.”

“I see.”

“The reason she was here, all the girls were having a going-away farewell party for Bette and Tina, and everybody was up in the TV room watching a farewell tribute video Jenny had made. Throughout the evening people were coming and going, and at some point they went looking for Jenny and found her in the pool.”

“But they caught who did it, right? It was one of the women?”

“Well, that’s where it gets really complicated. Yes, Alice was one of the women here, one of our friends, and yes, she confessed. She’s in prison now, up at Humboldt. But the thing is, she lied, she was covering up for somebody else. And that person didn’t kill Jenny either, but somebody did. So her friend Shane and I asked the county to re-open the case. They said no, but said we could look into it on our own, if Detective Hancock babysat us. So that’s why Detective Hancock is here. We’re hoping to find the real killer and get our friend Alice released from prison, because she didn’t do it.”

“Wow. That’s like something you see on TV.”

“I know.”

“How’s the investigation going? You have anything?”

“Not really, no. One problem is, back in the day, the murder wasn’t investigated very thoroughly because Alice confessed so quickly. It’s not the cops’ fault they didn’t do a thorough job, it’s just that Alice’s confession stopped them. She confessed, so the police and DA accepted it, case closed.”

“I see. But you think the real killer’s still out there?”

“Yes.”

“Think you’ll find him. Or her?”

“I have no idea.”

“Have any good suspects.”

Carmen laughed a little harshly. “Too many. We’re up around ten or so, at the moment.”

“Ten?”

“Rough count. Here’s the thing. Everybody who was here that night at the party had a major grievance against Jenny. She had done some bad stuff to a lot of people, some petty, some not. So every one of them had a motive, including Alice, my friend Shane, Bette, Tina, Bette’s sister Kit, our friend Helena. They were all mad at her, in varying degrees of anger, each for their own reason. Not enough to kill her, of course, but that’s just my opinion. And there were people who weren’t even here who had a motive, people at the movie studio where Jenny worked.”

“That’s right! I forgot about the movie thing. Jenny had something to do with a movie, and there was that crazy actress--”

“Niki Stevens.”

“Right, her, the one who’s always in and out of rehab, and getting her picture taken getting out of a limo while flashing her cooter--”

Carmen laughed. “Yes, that’s her. She was here that night, too, they found her in the bushes over there where Lauren is looking around. She had motive, too.”

“I’ll have to rent a copy of that movie. What was the name of it, again?”

“It was never released. Jenny wrote a book, a memoir, about all us women who were her friends. You can buy that most anywhere. And then she sold the screenplay of it to the studio and they had just finished making the movie when Jenny was murdered. But a few weeks before that somebody had stolen all the negatives. Turns out it was Niki Stevens, and she hid the negatives in the attic right next door, in Jenny’s house, to make it look like Jenny stole them. The missing negatives were discovered there just a few minutes before the murder.”

“Oh, my God, really? Wow. Was this on the TV news? I’m sure I’d have remembered--”

“No, most of it never came out, there was no reason for it to. Alice had confessed, and her confession, false as it was, had nothing to do with the film negatives. The studio eventually got them back and sat on everything, all the information about their end of it. The whole thing had been tainted by all sorts of scandals and problems during the shoot--”

“No kidding!”

“—so they hushed that part up and put the movie on a shelf somewhere, or burned it, I have no idea. But all that never got thoroughly investigated, and it’s something we have to take a fresh look at.”

Lauren came over to where they were standing. “Mind if we look around upstairs?”

“Sure, that’s fine. Follow me,” Gladys said. They followed Gladys up the stairs to the outside upper deck, and went through the sliding double door into what was still the master bedroom. “The house is still structurally the same, I haven’t done anything to it except paint, things like that. And of course the furniture is different. This was Bette and Tina’s new master bedroom, right off the new deck. What they called their media room is down this hall and to the left past the master bathroom and the guest bathroom.”

They followed Gladys down the hall into the guest bedroom.

“This used to be the media room, right?” Lauren asked, rhetorically. “It’s at the front of the house. If most of the women were in here and watching a video, they wouldn’t have heard anything out on the back deck, especially if the master bedroom door and the outside sliding doors were closed at the time.”

“I only knew the house when it was one story,” Carmen said, “but yes, that sounds right to me, too. Do we know anything about the argument at the moment Jenny was killed?”

“No,” Lauren said. “We have Alice’s confession, which we believe to be false, and what she said was they were mostly hissing at each other, trying to keep the noise down, and then Alice says she pushed her, Jenny fell to the cement pavement below, and then Alice rolled her into the pool. But even if it’s a false confession, it sticks to what little we know. There was no railing, Jenny had a bump on the head, there was some of her blood on the sidewalk, and she was face down in the pool. So whoever did do it didn’t make much noise. We can assume there was no yelling or screaming, because even if your friends didn’t hear it in the media room, none of the other neighbors heard anything, either, according to our reports. If she was talking to someone, they weren’t loud enough to cause alarm. And we don’t even know if there was any talking at all before she fell. We’re just guessing.” Lauren looked around the guest bedroom one last time. “Carmen, you have any questions? Anything else you need to see here?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Okay, then, let’s go next door. Gladys, thanks very much for letting us look around.”

“Hey, no problem, glad to be able to help. Could you guys let me know how your investigation turns out?”

“Yes, sure,” Lauren said, “if we find anything. In the meantime, though, would you mind keeping a lid on this? I have no authority to prevent you from saying whatever you want to whomever you want, but – and I know I speak for Carmen, too – we’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to the media, don’t tell anybody what we’re doing. I mean, you can tell your mom or your boyfriend or significant other as long as they don’t--”

“Not an issue,” Gladys said.

“Okay, good. Well, again, thanks for letting us look around.”

All three women walked down the hall, through the double doors, and out onto the deck.

“I’ll say goodnight here,” Gladys said. “Time for me to get some sleep.”

“’Night,” Lauren said, going down the stairs.

“’Night, and thanks,” Carmen said. “It was nice meeting you.”

“You, too,” Gladys said. “Hey, if you talk to Tina and Bette, tell them I said hello, and that I love the house and their renovations.”

“I will,” Carmen said.

At the bottom of the stairs Carmen stopped and looked around the pool and the backyard one last time.

“Need a moment?” Lauren asked. She wondered if Carmen was remembering the sex she’d almost certainly had in the pool, but didn’t ask.

“Yeah. We had some good times here. All right, let’s go.” Carmen passed by Lauren and opened the gate in the fence between the two properties. “How about I show you the studio first?”

“Great.”

“Once upon a time this was a garage,” Carmen said, leading the way. “Tim converted it before he and Jenny got here. Jenny used it for a writing studio, and later on I did too, for my music and DJ stuff. They also rented it out when they needed the rent money. And yes, before you ask, a lot of sex happened here. This is where Marina was going down on Jenny when Tim walked in on them. So this is where Jenny’s marriage blew up, right here. You have the keys?”

“Yes,” Lauren said. She held a key ring in her hand with half a dozen keys. “I think it’s … yes.” She unlocked the door and let Carmen walk in first.

“Shane and I repainted it when I first moved in with her,” Carmen said. “Then we got silly and had a paintball fight.”

“Messy,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, it was. We were naked at the time.”

“Good planning.”

“This is also where I confessed to Shane I had cheated on her.”

Lauren said nothing.

“It was with Robin, my deeply closeted schoolteacher friend in San Diego who I’m apparently no longer having even a casual fuckbuddy relationship with.”

“I sense a little bitterness.”

“Maybe. Anyway, let’s go in the house.” Carmen led the way out, waited for Lauren to lock up, then went to the deck by the back door. “See all these flowerbeds? I worked my ass off on them. Rejuvenated them, cleaned them out, planted flowers of all kinds. It’s all gone to hell now.”

“Metaphoric,” Lauren said. Carmen glanced at her. “Sorry.”

Carmen turned and looked back at the scruffy yard. “This is where Shane proposed to me. She was sitting on the step, right here. I was gardening. We had just returned from Dana’s funeral. Shane was crying. I mean, _really_ crying. She took Dana’s death really hard. I was letting her get it out. I was weeding over there where that dead rose bush is. And she just says, out of the goddam blue, ‘Will you marry me?’ Open the back door, please.”

Lauren turned away and used her key collection to open the door to the kitchen. She went in, Carmen following. “Different,” Carmen said.

“How so?”

“New refrigerator. They put in a dishwasher. New microwave. Either new cabinets, or at least they put on new doors or refurbished the old ones. We had a rectangular table, these people have a round one. But it looks neat and clean. That’s nice. You know anything about who lives here?”

“Not much. A young couple. He’s in accounting or something, and she a secretary. No kids.”

“Not gay, then.”

“No. I’m told there’s some straight people even in West Hollywood.”

Carmen walked into the dining room and then the living room. “Art work on the walls all different. And they like Swedish modern, Ikea modern.”

“No, not to my taste, either,” Lauren said. “But all in all not a bad starter home. Did you like living here?”

“Yeah, I did. One of the differences between me and Shane, I’m a nest-builder, like I said. I put a lot of work into this place. Painting, fixing up, swapping out old, bad furniture for better stuff. Upgraded the carpet, new area rug. New, big-screen TV, right before everybody switched over to those new flat screens.”

“But you were still renting, right?”

“Yes. But the landlord was a good guy. He liked that we were protective and improving his investment. He reimbursed us for all the cost of paint and split the cost of carpeting with us. You have to understand, it was my intention that this was a long-term relationship. A forever relationship.”

“I don’t think anyone ever doubted that about you,” Lauren said. “I want to go look at the infamous walk-in closet and the attic.”

Carmen led her down the hall to what had been Jenny’s bedroom. The blinds were down, so Carmen flipped on the light switch. The bedroom was neat and clean – the couple knew Lauren was coming. Lauren opened the door to the closet and found the light switch. Two-thirds of the space was devoted to her clothes and shoes, and one-third to his. Carmen stood watching.

“So this was the popular spot,” Lauren said. She looked up. “And the infamous pull-down steps.”

There was a small rope pull hanging from it. Lauren reached up and carefully pulled the steps down. The steps folded in half, and she unfolded the bottom portion. Then she climbed upstairs. Carmen came to stand at the bottom. “When you get up there, reach up and feel for the pull-string to the overhead light.”

A moment later the attic light came on. Carmen climbed the ladder and stopped waist-high into the attic. “I don’t know where the tapes were,” she said.

“I do,” Lauren said. “After Shane had found them she left them here, but showed them to Tina. When they were investigating the murder they were still up here. The crime scene people photographed them, and also drew a map. They were right about there, where that suitcase is now. Apparently Shane also found her jacket there, with Mollie’s letter in it. She took the jacket downstairs with her.”

Carmen looked around.

“Did you store stuff up here?” Lauren asked.

“Oh, sure. Suitcases, luggage, travel stuff. Some boxes of extra china and kitchen stuff I brought from home. Boxes of clothes. Couple cartons of old cassettes I didn’t need for my DJing, but never got around to throwing out.”

“What did Shane keep up here?”

“Same thing, the usual stuff. She didn’t have much, though.”

“Okay,” Lauren said.

“What are you thinking?” Carmen asked.

“Well, let’s see. Niki put the film canisters up here. She knew about the attic because she’d been in the closet, and looked up. It took a few minutes, carrying in the pile of canisters, pulling down the steps, carrying the canisters up. My guess is at least two trips, maybe three. They aren’t that heavy, but it’s awkward climbing with one hand if you don’t have someone to hand them up to you. So it means she had a window of time and wasn’t worried about being discovered. Then, at a later date, when Mollie had dropped off Shane’s jacket, Jenny had come in here, pulled down the stairs, gone up, and then my guess is she just tossed the jacket without ever turning on the overhead light and looking around. Had she looked around, she’d have seen the canisters, but it’s pretty clear she didn’t. That sound right?”

“Yes. And maybe she was in a hurry, worried Shane would be home soon. So she just tossed it, like you said, and never looked around."

"Were there fingerprints?" Carmen asked.

"Yes, on the ladder, but what you'd expect. Shane, Jenny's, Tina's. Nothing from Niki, so she wore gloves. We'll ask her that."

"There’s one thing we’re losing focus on,” Carmen said.

“What’s that?

“The jacket and letter. Shane isn’t all that interested in clothes. It wasn’t the jacket being hidden up there that pissed her off. It was Mollie’s letter in the jacket pocket.”

“Okay, good point. The jacket is secondary to the letter.”

Lauren reached up, turned off the light and climbed down the ladder, and put it back up in place in the ceiling.

* * *

"I can see the wheels turning in your brain. What are you thinking?" Lauren asked as they drove downtown.

"Am I that transparent?" Carmen asked.

"Transparent? Um ... no, wrong word. You aren't transparent. But you are pretty open and up front, and you don't try to hide things or pretend. So in a way, yes, that makes you easy to read. In my opinion, that's a good thing about you, not a bad thing. Now, someone like Capt. Duffy ... you don't know how fucking hard I have to work to figure out what's on her devious, clever, suspicious little mind behind that stony façade. No, I'll take transparent over unreadable every time."

"So ... that was a compliment?"

"Absolutely. Sorry if it came out ass backwards."

"Okay, then."

"So what were the wheels turning about?"

"You know a lot of about murderers, right? The psychology and all that?"

"Well, some, not much. I've worked homicide, sure, and most of them are pretty simple. Somebody gets pissed and kills somebody else. There isn't a whole lot of complexity about it, most of the time. A drug deal goes bad, so some asshole pulls a gun. The wife hates the husband, the husband hates the wife, somebody snaps. Some crack addict goes into a Korean market looking to rob the register. Then you have your serial psychos. There, I've just covered about ninety-eight percent of all homicides."

"Okay, I'm talking about the other two percent, then. Maybe one percent of the two percent."

"Got it. The answer is, I don't know too much more than anybody else. What did you have in mind?"

"Is it possible ... have there ever been cases ... where the person kills somebody else, and then completely blanks out on it, actually forgets they did it almost instantly, and actually believes they didn't do it?"

Lauren mulled it over. "Who we talking about?"

Carmen hesitated. "Shane."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. You were the major cheerleader for the idea that Shane couldn't possibly have done it, because she'd have fallen apart afterward, and could never have hidden it from everybody, most especially within minutes of it happening."

"Yeah, I was. That was me. But now I'm asking, could she have killed Jenny, by accident. Pushed her or something, didn't mean to kill her, but Jenny fell down and hit her head and slid into the pool, and Shane went into this kind of, I don't what you call it. Denial, or shock, or something. A blackout. Amnesia, I don’t know if that’s the right word. What I mean is, could Shane have done it and then blacked out on it so completely that she truly believes she didn't do it? Could she sincerely believe she's innocent, even if she isn't?"

“Things like that have been known to happen, yes. It’s rare, but it happens.”

They rode for several blocks in silence.

“I have another question,” Lauren said, “but it doesn't have anything to do with the case. It's another 'Go to Hell' question, if you want it to be.”

“Okay, fire away,” Carmen said. “After everything else we've talked about, how bad could it be?”

Lauren glanced at her and glanced back at the street. “I think maybe it would be the hardest question there is.”

“Wow. Trying to scare me, huh?”

“Back to the wedding,” Lauren said. “Not the day itself. Before. Why'd you say yes? You had doubts. You knew her issues with monogamy, with staying faithful. Yet you never blinked, to hear you tell it. You were in it 100 percent right to the final moment.”

“Yes,” Carmen said. “Yes, that's true. And you want to know why?”

“Yes.”

“Because that's how you are supposed to enter a marriage. And if I am anything, I'm a one-hundred-and-ten-percent gal. When I commit, I commit. Full speed ahead. Pedal to the metal. Thelma and Louise, right over the cliff. That's me.”

“Except it was just you, Thelma. Louise bailed on you.”

“Maybe I'm Louise and it was Thelma who bailed on me.”

“Whatever.”

“Okay, I'm deflecting. So here's what should have happened. I'm talking days before, and maybe even weeks. It doesn't matter. But yes, long before we got to Whistler and I put on my beautiful wedding dress. One of the two of us should have known this was a bad mistake. One of us should have known Shane was a bad risk, and an unlikely spouse. Likely to be unfaithful, like you said. Likely to cheat. Likely, at some point, to break my heart. Likely to get bored and Seven-Year-Itchy somewhere around Year Two or maybe Year Three, at the most. Uncomfortable with monogamy. One of us should have said to herself, look, kid, this started while grieving over Dana when everybody was super vulnerable. It started when you looked ahead at all the long, lonely years, and didn't want that future. One of us should have known that although Shane meant well, and had the very best of intentions, but that she wasn't going to be able to go through with it. Hell, everybody else in Greater Lesbian LA knew it, so why not Shane and me? Well, the answer is, one of us _did_ know it. And one of us did act on it. The one that knew, and realized it was a bad idea, and who figured out what was going on … was Shane. She knew. She realized. But she took too long to process it, because things like this always take her forever to figure out. But give her credit, she did it, she processed all of it just in the nick of time. Not only that, she processed it with all these side distractions going on, meeting her father for the first time ever, learning about his scam and the theft of the money, me losing my family – or at least losing my mom, when I came out to her -- and then regaining her when we got to Whistler. All this tremendous stuff going on, all these pressures and distractions, and still Shane processed it all and got to a solution. In a perverse sort of way, I'm proud of her. She figured it all out, and acted on it. Just not very well, that’s all.”

“But I don’t get it. You said you’ll never forgive her. Why not, if you say she processed everything and acted on it?”

“Because she came to the right conclusion but made the wrong decision about what to do about it. She had options, and characteristically that’s when she fucked up. She panicked. She ran. That’s what she does, who she is. First off, the minute she learned about her father’s scam, she should have come to Helena, and to me, too, and told us what was happening. I was supposed to be her partner, her future spouse. That’s the person you’re supposed to confide in, to trust above all others, right? To seek help from, if necessary. Not only didn’t she come to me or Helena, she didn’t go to Alice, or anybody else. Theoretically, the groom isn’t supposed to have contact with the bride on the wedding day, but God knows, Shane is about the last human on the face of the earth who would care about some old hoary tradition like that. No, she panicked, and tried to deal with it herself, which she was incapable of doing. Sure, the scam would have been a major blight on our wedding, and maybe we might have postponed it for a day, or a week, or whatever it might have taken. But the scam had nothing to do with our relationship, with whether I loved her or she loved me. Her old man is a crook and an asshole; so what? What’s that got to do with me? What’s that got to do with her? With us? Nothing. She barely even knew the bastard, but she let him get inside her head and convince her she’s worthless just like he is. See, she’s always thought that about herself, anyway, so it didn’t take much to reinforce that idea. And who knows, maybe he sensed that in her, or maybe it was just a mean, lucky shot. But he hit his bull’s eye, and walked away. And what’s worse, he did it for a relatively paltry sum of money, only ten thousand bucks, and he knew he was hurting a lot of people. Not just Shane and me, but Carla, too, and his own son.”

“That’s not just a cold-hearted prick,” Lauren said. “That’s a sociopath.”

"Yep. But for me, here's the final thing. The deal-breaker."

"What's that?"

"I hate to use this word, but I don't have any choice."

"Yes?"

"The word is 'coward.' Shane is a coward."


	8. Motive

It was after 2 p.m. when Carmen and Lauren got back to the conference room. They’d called Shane and told her they were leaving 14th Street, and did Shane want to join them for lunch someplace? She did not, since she was in a meeting with Chase in his limo somewhere out in the valley. Shane said she’d meet them in the conference room about 2 p.m. Carmen and Lauren stopped at Pink’s for hot dogs; Carmen had the Guadalajara (no bacon) and Lauren had the Chicago Polish, mild. They split the regular fries.

“One time on a dare I came here with two other woman cops,” Lauren said. “The dare was, could I eat the entire double pastrami Swiss cheese burger.”

“How’d you do?”

“Well, the thing is, you should never dare a cop to do something. So yeah, I finished it, but it was a struggle, and I didn’t eat for three days afterward. But oh, my God it was good. I was useless until end-of-shift, of course.”

Shane was sitting at the conference table going through a sheaf of reports and financial statements Chase had given her to review. Lauren excused herself for a minute to go check messages.

“How’d the field trip go?” Shane asked.

“Okay. It was… uh, not fun, I guess. But Lauren saw what she needed to see. Have you been back there?”

“No. I couldn’t. I went back just to get my stuff, but I couldn’t go next door to Bette and Tina’s.”

“The woman who lives there now seems to like it. Their backyard seems about the same. The couple who live in our old place have let all my plants go to hell. Remember my roses? They replaced them with cactus.”

“I hate to confess, but that probably started with Jenny and me. I went out and watered them and stuff, but I was never as good with flowers like you were. I probably don’t have to tell you how Jenny was when it came to gardening.”

“No.”

Lauren came in and went directly to the white board, where she picked up an eraser, cleaned the board, and then wrote with a marker, “MOTIVE.”

“Ready to get to work?” she asked.

“10-4,” Carmen said, which made them laugh.

Lauren wrote on the board:

_Shane:_

_Max:_

_Bette:_

_Tina:_

_Alice:_

_Kit:_

_Helena:_

_Niki:_

_Adele:_

_Tasha:_

_Studio/Aaron K/William H:_

_Unsubs:_

“Unsubs?” Shane asked.

“Unknown subjects. Cop jargon. Just a catch-all for people we don’t know about yet.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Who are Aaron K and William H?” Carmen asked.

“Aaron Kornbluth, the head of the studio. William Halsey is a big shot investor Jenny roped into the deal. We may need to look into it for more details that may lead to motive. But we can probably assume he lost money because of the fiasco. So maybe revenge. We’ll have to look at it.”

“Right,” Carmen said. “Go ahead.”

Then Lauren started filling in the spaces:

_Shane: J hid Molly letter, sabotages reconciliation_

_Max: J mistreat, cause bf breakup, jilted for Claude_

_Bette: J moral blackmail over Kelly incident_

_Tina: Thought J stole negs, cost studio, sabotaged movie_

_Alice: Says J stole movie treatment, got $1/2mil_

_Kit: Knew J blackmailing sister, believed Bette innocent_

_Helena: J divulged Dylan test, sabotaged reconciliation_

_Niki: J used/abused/humiliated_

_Adele: Usurped J as director. Mental?_

_Tasha: ?_

_Studio/Aaron K/William H: Believed J stole negs, cost millions plus O costs_

_Unsubs: ?_

“What are O costs?” Shane asked.

“What they call opportunity costs. If the movie had been shown, the studio might have made millions.”

“Or lost millions if it flopped,” Carmen said. “Maybe Niki did them a big favor, from what I’ve heard.”

“Well, maybe,” Lauren said, “but I think we have to assume the studio was pissed.” She consulted her notepad and then wrote on the board:

_Paraphrases_

_Alice: Schecter is so fucking dead_

_Helena: [to Shane] I’m going to fucking kill your girlfriend_

_Niki: Jenny Schecter is a liar and user. You not going get away with this. You are dead meat, Schecter_

_Tina: Fucking Jenny, I’m going to fucking kill you_

_Max: I hate her. Hate these hormones, hate these tits and hips and hate Jenny Schecter_

_Bette: My family and life worked hard to rebuild for them means everything to me and there is nothing that I wouldn’t do to preserve or protect them. All care about is that you [J] know I will not abide anyone who threatens my family_

“Can anybody think of any other overt threats to kill Jenny?”

Shane and Carmen looked at each other, then shook their heads. “That’s a pretty scary list,” Carmen said. “Dead meat. I’m going to kill you.”

“Yes, but we all say this kind of stuff all the time. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s just talk.”

“One percent it isn’t,” Shane murmured.

“One percent it isn’t,” Lauren agreed. “But you two know all these women a lot better than I do. I know they’re your long-time friends, but I’m relying on you to give me a good read on these kinds of statements. Who says stuff like this all the time and doesn’t mean it? Who’s the truth-teller, who’s the drama queen? I know the first one you’re going to say is Alice, but she’s the one in jail.”

“I don’t know Niki at all,” Carmen said, “but everything I’ve read and heard about her screams drama queen.”

“Totally,” Shane said.

“Would Niki kill Jenny?”

“No. She’d get one of her posse to do it,” Shane said.

“Seriously?”

Shane shrugged. “It was kind of a joke. But who the fuck knows? This is Hollywood. Stuff no one would believe goes on all the time.”

“Amen, sister,” Lauren said. She drew a dotted line circle around Niki’s name. “Not saying yes, but not saying no. What about Helena?”

“Helena would say I’m going to kill you, but she wouldn’t do it,” Carmen said.

“No, I agree,” Shane said. “Not Helena.”

“We haven’t talked about Dylan,” Carmen said. “I don’t know her, and I don’t see any motive. Just bringing up her name.”

“I don’t see it,” Shane said. “It was Jenny who tipped Dylan off to the test, which pissed Helena off. But Dylan had no motive.”

“Well, she lost a fantastically rich girlfriend. That’s a motive. Okay, back to the list. Not Tina,” Carmen said.

“Nope,” Shane agreed.

There was silence.

“Max?” Lauren prodded.

“I have a problem with Max,” Carmen said. “We had bad chemistry, right from the start. I just didn’t like him, for lots of reasons. The way he treated Jenny, for starters. And Max has a temper. When he was going through his hormone treatments and doing the fundraising for his top surgery he was a fucking, raging, testosterone lunatic. Some I saw with my own eyes, some Jenny told me about. They were always fighting and bickering. Even after I moved to San Francisco, I’d hear stuff. Jenny would tell me stuff, or other people would. But see, I don’t want my dislike of Max to color my perceptions. But if you asked me, and factoring all that stuff in, I’d say yes, Max was certainly capable at snapping, and suddenly pushing Jenny off the landing. And no, I don’t think he’s smart enough to have planned it, it wouldn’t have been premeditated.”

"Would he have then rolled her into the pool?" Lauren asked.

"Yes," Carmen said. "He would. And he'd be cold as ice afterward. No remorse."

“Shane?” Lauren asked.

Shane sighed. “I hate to, but I agree. Max has a temper. He can fly off the handle. And Carmen’s right. When he was doing the hormone shots and transitioning, he was a lunatic."

Lauren drew a circle around Max’s name. “So we like Max for it. What about Bette?”

Nobody said anything. “Come on, guys.”

“I love Bette,” Carmen said. “She’s tough, and she’s smart, and she’d do anything to protect Angelica, and her family, and her relationship with Tina. And God knows, she’s been angry at things from time to time, but I can’t say she has a fiery temper. She doesn’t internalize, like Shane does, but neither does she blow up, explode. You see smoke coming out her ears when she’s pissed. But I don’t see her spontaneously pushing Jenny. If Bette really did want to kill Jenny, she’d carefully plot it out over weeks or months. She’d have an alibi. Nobody would ever catch her.”

Lauren looked at Shane, who nodded. “That’s about right,” she said.

“What about accidentally? Not intending to kill her, but pushing. And maybe Jenny started it, got in Bette’s face and Bette simply pushed back. She’s bigger and stronger.”

“In that case,” Carmen said, “Bette would have walked up to the media room and told the others, ‘Well, I just killed the bitch,’ sat down and burst into tears. But she didn’t do that. And anyway, she wouldn't have walked down the steps and rolled Jenny into the pool. The unintentional pushing or shoving, yes. The pool part, no.”

Shane nodded.

Lauren drew a dotted line circle around Bette’s name. “Not saying yes, but not saying no. Next, Adele. Shane, you knew her.”

“Devious. Evil. About as two-faced as you can get. But I don’t see the motive. She got what she wanted, Jenny’s job. Got her fired off the lot. Why would she kill Jenny?”

“Like everybody else, she probably thought Jenny stole her movie. Her big breakout debut as director. Savior of the project. All that plotting and scheming and backstabbing, down the drain. After the smoke cleared, Aaron quietly demoted her to assistant producer or something.”

“That was after Jenny was killed,” Shane said. “And I’m sure there was a payoff. Terminating her contract, whatever terms it had, might have been out of the question, plus the yelling and screaming, all the drama and publicity. I know Jenny’s contract had all sorts of clauses and stuff. I’m guessing Adele’s would have, too. If Aaron knows his shit, he can find a way to keep her on salary but off in a corner where she can’t do much harm.”

“Did Adele have an alibi for that night?” Carmen asked. “Oh, shit. Don’t tell me. We don’t know.”

“Bingo,” Lauren said. “Nobody asked, because blah blah blah, don’t make me say it again.”

Carmen and Shane laughed.

“Doesn’t it strain credibility, though, to think that not one but two people were lurking in the bushes behind Bette and Tina’s house?” Carmen asked.

“Or our house, same thing, I guess,” Shane said. “But yes. Unless Niki and Adele were there together.”

“Why would Niki and Adele team up?” Carmen asked.

“Common enemy? But before we dismiss it too fast, let’s think about it for a minute,” Lauren said. “The police on the scene found Niki. But could there have been the two of them, and somehow Adele got away, or left sooner, or whatever?”

“How thoroughly did your guys search the neighborhood?” Carmen asked. "And how did Niki get there? Did she drive? Did you find her car? Or did she come with Adele, who drove away leaving Niki there to face the cops?"

“Good questions. I’ll have to ask Marybeth. I would assume that they did a fairly good job, because they did find Niki. And after that they’d have looked around even more. But that’s just a guess on my part. I think they looked around, but we’ll need confirmation. I’ll work on it.” She moved to a second whiteboard and wrote TO-DO LIST. Then she wrote:

  * _Adele contract_
  * _Adele alibi_
  * _Neighborhood search?_
  * _How Niki got there. Car?_



“Anything else? No?” She moved to a clear space on the board and wrote the words “Follow the MONEY.”

“The root of all evil" Lauren said. "What do we know?” She started writing:

  * _J [stolen from Alice?] treatment worth 1/2mil, so J had 1/2mil?_
  * _J was paid for book deal – how much?_
  * _J was paid for screen rights – how much?_
  * _J salary as movie director; piece of action?_
  * _J estate went to ? – how much? May need warrant?_
  * _J bank account 6-12 months, will need warrant_
  * _Studio losses? Need warrant?_



Then she went back to the To-Do List and wrote:

  * _Warrant, J bank account/statements_
  * _Warrant, J estate/probate_



“Anybody know who handled Jenny’s estate?” Lauren asked.

“I do,” Shane said. “It was my lawyer, Bernie McFadden. Jenny’s mom called me two or three days after … after we found Jenny, and asked me if I knew who handled the estate. I told her I put Jenny in touch with his office two or three years ago, when Jenny started getting some major income from her book and stuff. They did a will for her, I know that, because I inherited the camera equipment and stuff that Jenny bought for me when she got me that photography studio.”

“What happened to it? The studio.”

“It was leased,” Shane said. “So was some of the equipment. Jenny was paying for it, and some of the other equipment she bought outright, and gave to me. But technically it was still in her name, because she was the purchaser, and we had nobody’s word on who it belonged to except mine, so she put it in her will. That’s what Bernie told me, anyway. Most everything she owned was liquidated and went to her mom, that’s what Bernie said. He did the work on it, or his office did. I don’t know what the total amount came to, though. It wasn’t my business. I assume her mom got it.”

“In really, really round figures, a real wild-ass guess, how much do you think we’re talking about?”

Shane thought. “I don’t know. Couple hundred thousand, maybe. Maybe even half a million, that's what the treatment was that Alice was pissed about. Whenever she got a major check, like for royalties or something, she’d jump up and down and do a dance and carry on, but I never actually saw the amounts. You can ask Carmen, I’m just not that interested in money. Maybe it’s one of my character flaws.”

“It’s one of your virtues,” Carmen said.

“Oh. Well. Thanks,” Shane said quietly.

“All right,” Lauren said, “we’re talking about substantial amounts of money coming in—“

“And going out,” Carmen said. “For a while she was spending it like a sailor on shore leave.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Shane said.

“I understand. But it’s still a pile of money, and you really don’t need all that much before people will start killing for it. We’ll just have to find out how much was coming in and how much going out. It needs to be checked. Let me just put this idea out there: Did Jenny’s parents know how much money Jenny had? Do we need to look at them? Maybe the stepfather, at least?”

“I honestly don’t think so,” Carmen said. “One time I asked her when she came up to San Francisco, what are you going to do with all your money, buy a new house for your mom and Warren? And she about spit out her drink. ‘Fuck, no,’ she says. ‘I hardly tell them anything about what I’m doing or how much money I’m making. Warren can go fuck himself. I’ll take care of my mom, but no way I’m buying anything he gets a share in.’ He was her step-father, you know, and they never got along. My guess is, they were pretty clueless.”

“I agree,” Shane said. “I sometimes heard Jenny talk on the phone to her mom, which was like, maybe twice a year, Christmas and her mom’s birthday—“

“And her mom would call on Jenny’s birthday,” Carmen said.

“Right. So three times a year. And it was always pretty brief and Jenny never said much. One thing is for certain, she never bragged, at least not to her mom.”

“Okay, we cross them off the suspect list. Everybody agreed?”

“Yes,” Carmen said.

“Yes,” Shane said.

Lauren moved to her third whiteboard and wrote INTERVIEWS. “These are people we need to talk to,” she said, writing:

_Bette/Tina together and apart_

_Max_

_Helena_

_Kit_

_Adele_

_Niki_

_Aaron/William[apart]_

_Alice?_

_McFadden_

_Kelly_

_Bank/Accountant?_

_Marybeth/Cops on Scene_

She turned to Shane and Carmen. “Do we need to talk to Tasha? I don’t know if you guys kept in touch with her, but she’s a beat cop now. Doing good, from what I hear.”

“I don’t think we truly need to see if she knows anything,” Carmen said, “but I think maybe we owe her an explanation of what we’re doing about Alice. I think she’s entitled to know. She and Alice were a thing, for a while. And she may have some insights.”

“You know Tasha?” Shane asked Carmen.

“Oh, sure, she and Alice came on a cruise. And they visited me up in San Francisco. We went up to Napa, wine-tasting, together. It was fun. I like her.”

Shane just nodded. Not for the first time, she marveled at how well and how often Carmen had kept in touch with the group following the Whistler disaster. It seemed like Carmen knew what everybody was doing better than Shane did. No, not "seemed like." DID know better.

“Why did you put Kelly’s name up there?” Carmen asked.

“No good reason I can explain,” Lauren said, “except call it cop instinct. It’s bothered me from the beginning that business about whether Bette was cheating on Tina, and did something with Kelly, and that Jenny was blackmailing Bette about it. We’ve heard from Kit, Tina and Bette about it, but we haven’t heard Kelly’s side of it. I just want to clear it up, if possible. And anyway, blackmail is a crime. It's not as big as murder, but it is still something. I'd like to know if there really was a blackmail that would actually be criminal, or whether everybody's using the word as a figure of speech. Nobody has ever said anything about the blackmail being a money thing.”

“Okay,” Carmen said. “Why a question mark after Alice’s name?”

“Just being thorough,” Lauren said. “Most of what she said first time around were lies, so we do need to get her truthful version, for a change. We’re re-interviewing everybody, right? She’s one of them, that’s all. Shane’s the only one of us who’s actually talked to her, when she went up there—“

“I’ve talked to her,” Carmen said.

“You have?” Shane said, astonished. “You never told me.”

“You never asked, and it’s none of your business. I’ve talked to her on the phone half a dozen times, I visited her once when I was home, and I’ve sent her stuff. Clothes and cigarettes and stuff.”

“I had no idea,” Shane said.

“You weren’t supposed to,” Carmen said. “It’s like separation of church and state. Like I told you, these are every bit my friends just as much as they are yours, even if you knew them first or longer. But we all have this understanding, nobody tells Shane what Carmen’s up to, and nobody tattletales to Carmen what Shane’s doing.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie, because over the years Jenny and especially Alice both leaked information like sieves, but the flow was one-way only. Carmen couldn’t tell Shane that part. The Whistler fiasco, though, was still off-limits to everyone.

“Okay. I’m brain-dead,” Shane said. “Can we knock off for the day?”

“We can,” Lauren said, “but I told Duffy I’d check in with her before the end of the day. You guys don’t have to, but I’d like it if you came along, checked in, showed your faces.”

Carmen and Shane looked at each other. “Okay by me,” Carmen said. Shane shrugged but made no move to leave.

Lauren dialed her cell phone. “It’s me. You available for an update? Right.” Lauren hung up. “Caught a break. She’s free right now.”

* * *

“Well, well, if it isn’t Charlie’s Angels,” Marybeth Duffy said as they walked into her office and Lauren closed the door. “Which one of you is the smart one?”

Shane held up her hand. “Not me. I'm the dumb one,” she said.

“I'm the fashionista,” Carmen said.

“I thought you were the one with the great tits,” Shane said.

“That, too, but I'm also the fashionista,” Carmen said, and then pointed at Lauren. “She's the smart one, and she even went to the police academy like the Angels did.”

“Charlie's Angels went to the police academy?” Shane asked.

“The original ones did,” Lauren said. “I'm not sure about the new ones.”

“I always liked the ones with Cheryl Ladd,” Carmen said. “I so wanted to do Cheryl Ladd.”

“I'd like to do Lucy Liu,” Shane said.

“Oh, me, too,” Lauren said.

“Maybe you could both do her,” Carmen suggested.

Shane and Lauren looked at each other, and then turned to Duffy.

"Works for me,” Shane said.

"Yeah, sure, why not,” Lauren said.

“Comedians,” Duffy said.

“I thought we were Angels," Shane said.

“Angel comedians,” Carmen said. "Hey, I got an idea, Lieutenant. You can be the smart one."

Duffy frowned. "Sucking up, huh?"

Carmen beamed shamelessly.

"I'm beginning to like you, Morales. You can be the smart one until further notice. Okay, let's cut the shit. What have you got?"

“First off, I think we’re making progress,” Lauren said. “We think we have a couple people we’d like to take a closer look at. There’s a good bit of legwork I have to do, and then we have a bunch of interviews to do. But first we have a major question for you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. The night of the murder, you were on scene, you were in charge. While you were talking inside to the women, one of the team found Niki Stevens hiding in the bushes.”

“Right. What about it?”

“We were wondering if they found anyone else, or rather, how big a canvas did they do after they found Niki.”

“You’re thinking there was someone else?”

“We’re just wondering if it’s possible there was. We even have someone in mind. But that person might have left the scene before the homicide team found Niki. Then there’s the transportation issue. How did Niki get there?”

“Okay, I see what you’re asking,” Duffy said. “Yes, when they brought Stevens in, I told them to make sure there was no one else around. So yes, I’d say our search of the neighborhood was thorough, but yes, there could have been someone else who just walked away before we got there. Never got to transportation. Never canvassed for Niki's car. That help?”

“Well, it’s what we figured.”

“Who’s your second suspect?”

“Adele Channing.”

“Refresh my memory.”

“She’s the woman who was Jenny’s assistant, then took over her job as director. She would have been Niki’s boss after Jenny was fired by the studio.”

“Motive?”

“Unknown.”

“I’ve got an idea about that,” Carmen said.

“Tell me,” Duffy said.

“We now know it was Niki who stole the negatives and hid them in Jenny’s attic, right?”

“She confessed to it, yes.”

“Her motive was to get back at Jenny. But if the negs are never discovered, the revenge is never truly completed. Jenny is never exposed as the thief, alleged thief, anyway. So suppose Niki tells Adele she thinks that bitch Jenny stole the negs, and hey, come with me and we’ll sneak into Jenny’s house and maybe we can find them there.”

Everyone chewed on it. “How’d they know we wouldn’t be home?” Shane asked.

“Easy,” Carmen said. “Jenny was running around for a week or more, rounding up and filming goodbye messages for Tina and Bette. She’d have asked people at the studio Tina had close ties with. I didn’t see the video; was Niki one of the people in it? If so, she’d have known there was going to be a party. And even if she wasn’t in it, maybe Jenny told her. Or she heard it from somebody else. At any rate, it would have been common knowledge around the studio Tina was moving to New York and Jenny was doing a farewell video. But even simpler, all you have to do is stake out your house, see when you both leave to go somewhere.”

"Okay," Shane said. "I'll buy that."

"I just thought of something else," Carmen said.

"That is?" Duffy asked.

"Suppose there was a second person hiding in bushes, whether Adele or somebody else. The person who drove her there, maybe, a member of her posse. So, if there was a second person, suppose they saw the murder … or suppose they _were_ the murderer."

Duffy looked at Lauren. “See? I knew she was going to be the smart Charlie’s Angel,” she said.


	9. Method

They met at a Chinese restaurant near the cop house. Lauren got there at three minutes to one, and took a booth near the back. She ordered an iced tea, waited fifteen minutes nursing it, and was about to text Lt. Duffy when she arrived, bucking the outgoing tide of cops and civil servants returning to work.

"Christ, you wouldn't believe my morning," Marybeth said. "I managed to squeeze in 45 minutes for lunch into my schedule, and that was 20 minutes ago. I fully intend to be half an hour late for my next meeting. Hancock, someday I may need you to remind me why I once wanted to be a cop. I can hardly remember the last time I did any actual police work, or even supervised any. Budget meetings. Personnel meetings. Community relations meetings. Meetings to discuss task forces. Task forces to discuss holding meetings about task forces. I’ve heard rumors my department is supposed to be finding missing persons, but I tend to discount office gossip like that—“

“Malcontents. Troublemakers. Taxpayers,” Lauren said. “Pay no attention to it.”

“Exactly. I am sorely tempted to bust myself down to beat cop, citing poor attitude. Who do I have to blow to get an iced tea around here?"

Lauren let her vent, knowing Marybeth was decompressing. After the waiter came and they ordered, Marybeth closed her eyes in some kind of Zen thing Lauren had seen her do before. After a minute or two Marybeth slowly opened her eyes, sighed, and said, "There. Okay. All better now."

"There was a time I was ambitious, and thought about working my way up the chain of command, getting promoted and moving into admin."

"Don't do it," Marybeth said. "Don't fucking do it. Go as high as you want, but stay on that side of the wall. Don't get into administration. Stay on the street. It's more physically dangerous out there where you are, but the side I’m on will suck your soul right out of your ear drum, right out of your skull, while you’re sitting on your ass in a swivel chair in a perfectly safe, well-defended, well-lighted, climate-controlled office."

"So why do you do it?" Lauren asked, knowing she'd be going out on a limb with most superior officers, but knowing she could get away with it. Marybeth Duffy was as tough as any boss Lauren had ever had in the LAPD or LASD, but every once in a while Duffy let her humanity leak out. Not often ... but every once in a while. "Could you transfer back onto the street?"

"Why do I do it? I'm stuck, that's why. Somebody somewhere talent-spotted me for management. You know how bad they want every kind of minority there is to fly high as they can in the department, anything to demonstrate diversity and all that. The worst part is, I'm good at what I do. And so I got promoted and promoted, and now I'm stuck. And upstairs they all know it. Everybody knows I may make deputy chief someday. Everybody wants that."

"Except you?"

Marybeth shrugged. "I don't know. Some days, yes, I want it. Some days, no. Some days ... I just want to get in a squad car and go out and play cops and robbers, like you do."

Their lunches came.

"Okay," Marybeth said, opening a plastic packet of duck sauce and spreading it on her spring roll, and changing the subject to the real purpose of the lunch. “Where’d you leave Cagney and Lacy?”

“I gave them the morning off,” Lauren said. “They’re coming back in this afternoon. I had some work to do on other cases, plus I’ve got some paperwork to do on Schecter. I’m applying for warrants to look at all her finances.”

“I had those warrants pending right after the murder, but we never got to use them and they expired.”

“I know. They’re in the file. I basically cloned them and re-filed them.”

"Good. So where are we? Is McCutcheon still good for the murder?"

"I don't know yet," Lauren said. "It's way too soon to tell. I know she was our top suspect--"

"She wasn't our top suspect, she was our only suspect," Marybeth said. "We all made her for it right from the start."

"I know that," Lauren said. "That might have been our mistake."

"You don't think she did it?"

"I'm saying I don't know."

"But you're leaning away from it? You said last night you had some other suspects. I didn’t know if you were saying that for their benefit, or what."

"I'm trying to keep an open mind."

"But...?"

Lauren shrugged.

"What?"

Lauren played with her chow mein. "Carmen doesn't think Shane did it. She's sure of it."

"Yeah? So? Carmen's her ex, for crying out loud."

"I know. But in a way, that's the point. Carmen knows her, probably better than anybody else. It isn't that Carmen thinks Shane didn't do it, or didn’t have motive. Carmen even agrees Shane had more and better motive than anyone else. Even Shane knows she’s got the most motive. Carmen just thinks Shane isn't capable of it. She made a pretty good point, that even if Shane had killed Schecter, she couldn't have covered it up. She’d have been immediately remorseful and shook up."

"Shee-it," Marybeth said. "A lot of killers go all to pieces right after, but a lot of them don't. Some of them go into immediate denial or shock or whatever the hell it is, and three minutes after the deed they're as innocent as lambs, because that's really what they think. Never underestimate denial."

"Yes, I know. And I think I'm taking that into consideration, I really do. And I know what's in the back of your mind, that because I had a thing with Shane ten years ago, that maybe that's affecting my judgment, or something. Maybe I’m cutting her some slack. But I’m not. If anything, it'd probably go the other way, since it was a one-night stand, and she's the one who broke it off after that. So if anything ... oh, shit. Look, here's the thing. McCutcheon is a pretty strange creature. She's not much like anybody you or I know, or ever ran into. She doesn't think like other people, including people who commit murder. She's wired differently than other people, lesbians included."

Marybeth had a fork full of fried rice halfway to her mouth, but stopped in midair.

"Different ... how?"

"Well, you remember our original impression of her? That she wasn't the brightest light bulb in the chandelier? In fact, we couldn't even figure out how she managed to get up in the morning, feed herself, get dressed and go to work. We thought she was the original space cadet."

"Yeah? And?"

"Well, Carmen says a lot of people think that, but it isn't true."

"Oh, Carmen says that, does she?"

Lauren sighed in frustration. "Look, Carmen is pretty smart. In fact, she's very smart. And she knows Shane better than anyone. And she knew Schecter about as well as anyone. And she was a thousand miles away with a rock-solid alibi and absolutely no motive whatsoever. So yes, I know it bugs you a little, but Carmen knows her shit. And she's honest, and ..."

"Whoa, hold up, Lauren."

"No, don't give me that shit, Marybeth. I know I sound like I have some schoolgirl crush on her, but I know her better than you do, so please give me a little credit here. Morales has all kinds of useful insight, that's all I'm saying, and we'd be fools to ignore it, that's all. She’s by far our best resource on either one of them, Schecter or McCutcheon."

Lauren was ticked, and Marybeth let her alone for a few minutes as they ate in silence.

"So you do have a crush on her," Marybeth finally said.

"So fucking what?" Lauren said, angrily pushing food around on her plate and not looking up. "It doesn't affect my judgment, and it doesn't affect my police work. And nothing is going to happen, not one tiny fucking thing."

"Okay," Marybeth said softly. "I just wanted to get it out on the table."

"Well, it's out, okay? And it doesn't mean anything."

"Okay."

"Okay," Lauren repeated.

They ate in silence again.

"Anyway," Lauren said, "they're still in love with each other, and even if they weren't, Carmen won't date a cop, and who can blame her."

Marybeth stopped eating again and looked at her.

"What?" Lauren asked.

"They're still in love with each other? After all that crap that went down? Have they--"

"Shit, no!" Lauren said. "Yes, they're still in love, and no, they can barely stand to be in the same room with each other. Carmen has never forgiven McCutcheon. She says she never will, and I believe her. Meanwhile, Shane is so out of touch with her own feelings she doesn't even know she's still in love with Carmen."

"Ah, I see," Marybeth said. "Carmen doesn't know she's still in love with Shane."

"No."

"And Shane doesn't know she's still in love with Carmen."

"No."

"So the only one who actually thinks they are still in love with each other is you."

"Um ... yes, I guess."

Marybeth went back to eating.

"Stressing yet again that I'm keeping an open mind," Lauren said, "tell me again why we thought McCutcheon was good for it? And tell me why we still think it."

"I never said I still think it," Marybeth said.

"No, you didn't. But I know that's what you still think."

Ordinarily Marybeth got annoyed when people claimed to know what she was thinking, and she got even more annoyed when they were right, which Lauren was. She got annoyed because it was a cop thing, putting on this impenetrable front, pretending to be unreadable. Not all cops had it, but a lot of them did, and it was thought to be a desirable trait. But Marybeth wasn't annoyed with Lauren for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it was a good thing when your partner or members of your team knew what you were thinking. Further, Marybeth had known Lauren for several years, and was her mentor. Marybeth liked it when Lauren showed promise or did something especially well. She put down her fork, patted her napkin against her mouth, and organized her thoughts.

"Number one is just simple statistics, and I'm not saying anything you don't already know."

"Sure. Most of the time the killer is somebody close, very close, the spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend."

"Right, the spouse, the significant other, the lover, past, present or future, straight or gay, doesn’t matter, but yes, the people immediately around the vic, the ones with an emotional and usually romantic attachment, even if that attachment has morphed from love to hate. Two sides of the same coin. And that describes McCutcheon. That's first.

"Second, there were seven of them there that night, plus Schecter, and all seven were pissed at her. But if you evaluate them, we agree McCutcheon had every right to be angriest. She had just discovered earlier that day that her ex-girlfriend, what was her name?"

"Molly."

"Molly. Right. She just discovered Schecter hid the I'm-sorry-let's-reconcile letter in a coat pocket and stashed the coat in the attic. So right there she's pissed enough to strangle Schecter. I know I would be. And then while she's in the attic she discovers the missing film canisters from the movie. She jumps to the reasonable conclusion that Schecter stole them and hid them there. McCutcheon doesn’t care about the film itself, but she cares about the lies and deceit Schecter is guilty of, and all the harm she’s caused, especially to her other friend Tina, who was the movie producer. Plus she's living in a house where there's stolen property in the attic. So alone of all seven women, only McCutcheon has two really good, really strong reasons to want to throttle the little bitch. You with me so far?"

"Yes."

"Motive. Method. Opportunity. That’s always our litany. McCutcheon's got them all, in spades. Yes? No?"

"Yes," Lauren said.

"I gave you two reasons why she's good for it, not counting opportunity. Now, just to prove I'm not wedded to her as the killer, I'll give you two reasons why she didn't do it. You gave me the first one, that even if she did it she couldn't have carried it off afterward."

"And the second?"

"Because she's the one initiating this whole new investigation. She's the one who went up to Humboldt and came back all hot and bothered to get Alice out. Now, I grant you the possibility that Shane might have killed Schecter, and feels guilty not about the murder but about Alice being locked up for it. So whether she's the killer or not, she could want to get Alice off the hook. But here's what's significant: McCutcheon says she wants to find the real killer. She went up to Humboldt thinking _Pieszecki_ did it, and she came back convinced _Pieszecki_ didn't. Now, if McCutcheon was the killer she could still pretend to want to find the ‘real’ killer, like O. J. Simpson wanting to find the real killers, but that would require a one sneaky, devious, sly, and extremely narcissistic mind game. She'd be playing with us, pretending to want to find the killer, but secretly laughing at us and thinking she was outsmarting us."

"Well," Lauren said reluctantly, "that's a theory--"

"But it's a lousy one, I agree," Marybeth said. "Because such a person would have to be a really deep sociopath and a huge narcissistic personality, and that simply isn't McCutcheon."

"If you popped that theory to the other six suspects at that party, plus Carmen, plus me, that'd be eight women all laughing our asses off. McCutcheon as a devious O. J."

"Exactly. So when McCutcheon comes to us asking to re-open the case, it's because she's not only totally sincere and up-front, it goes even further, almost to a kind of naiveté, pretty much the polar opposite of devious narcissism. So that's reason number two: We both believe McCutcheon wants to get Alice out of prison for something Alice didn't do. She believes that somebody needs to find the real killer, but that is probably secondary. McCutcheon has concluded, correctly, that the one and only way to get Alice out is somebody needs to find the real killer. And Shane and Carmen conclude, again correctly, that they are the ones most highly motivated to do that. And to play that game, if Shane is the real killer then she also needs to find someone to pin it on in order to get Alice out. She'd have to set somebody up. Does that sound like something McCutcheon could pull off?"

“Now you’re arguing the opposite side of the case from what you first thought,” Lauren said.

Marybeth shrugged. "What's Carmen's motive? Just to help Shane?"

"I think that’s the lesser part of it. She's been friends with Alice for years, and if she believes – as she does – that Alice is innocent, she'd want to help get her out. Morales is a do-er, she goes out and does things. She’s pro-active, not reactive. And then there's the issue of her relationship with Schecter. Carmen may be motivated to find the killer simply on the basis of that alone. Catch the person who killed her ex-lover. It’s not an academic problem, it’s personal for her. And Carmen's a movie buff. She's Sam Spade wanting to find out who killed Miles Archer.”

“Carmen as Sam Spade. Shane as O. J. Well, that's interesting. Am I right that Carmen and Jenny remained friends after their break-up?"

"Yes."

"No spats? No recriminations? No she-said/she-said arguments?"

"None I'm aware of, but all that happened a couple years before the murder. Before Schecter had her breakdown," Lauren said. "Anyway, they are lesbians, and lesbians love to remain friends with their exes. It's what lesbians do. Their version of the Four F's is Find 'em, Feel 'em, Fuck 'em, Friend 'em for Life."

“So Morales may be the only one who wasn’t pissed at Schecter.”

“No, she wasn’t pissed, not on her own behalf, anyway, but she is certainly aware that Schecter had done bad stuff to everyone else. She seems to have no illusions about Schecter’s behavior and mental instability. And until I told them otherwise, she believed that it was Schecter who stole the negatives and hid them in the attic. Neither of them knew it was Niki. Speaking of which, was there a reason you never told them, back when Niki confessed it?”

Marybeth sat her napkin down and sighed. “No. That’s on me, I guess. Partly I was just generally disgusted with the case, and wanted to forget about it. Pyewacket had confessed, the DA’s office was moving ahead on the prosecution based on a guilty plea, and I just wanted to walk away. I didn’t think I especially owed them anything, and then a few days later the studio guy – what’s his name? Aaron something. He called, asked me when the negatives could be released from evidence, and said they were just going to quietly bury the movie, and weren’t going to press charges against Niki. I told him I didn’t care what they did with the negatives so long as they didn’t destroy them, and they could be made available somewhere down the road, if need be. He said that was no problem. But notwithstanding that, my attitude was, fuck you, fuck your cowardly studio, fuck your Hollywood politics, fuck everything. So yeah, my job was done, the case was closed, everything was out of my hands, so I walked away. And, like, six hours later I had another homicide anyway, and it was back to the grindstone on another case.”

“Okay, I kind of figured that,” Lauren said. She glanced at her watch. "Aren't you going to be late for a meeting or something?" Lauren asked.

Marybeth laughed.

* * *

Lauren handed out photocopies to Carmen and Shane. “This is the autopsy report and the forensic stuff,” she said. “I made copies so we can all read them together. I’m guessing you’ll have lots of questions, because it’s all in jargon. I’ve only skimmed it fast myself.” She sat down at the head of the conference table and began to read.

“Jesus,” Shane murmured, reading.

“Are all autopsy reports like this?” Carmen asked a minute later.

“Pretty much,” Lauren said.

“At least she wasn’t pregnant,” Carmen said a minute later when she read it. “Good to know.” Shane made a face at her. “Sorry.”

“Blood alcohol, point zero two,” Carmen said a minute later.

“She’d had maybe a half a glass of white wine,” Lauren said. “Several of your friends confirmed it. That’s a small amount, though, and almost statistically not even measurable. Not significant. Basically all it tells us is she wasn’t blind drunk and didn’t stumble off the deck in a stupor. Which no one thought anyway.”

They read some more.

“Nothing in her stomach,” Carmen said.

“We were both running around like madmen all day, getting ready for the party,” Shane said. “I ran some of her errands to help her out. I’m not surprised she didn’t eat. I don’t think I did, either, until the party. I had some chips and dip, and a piece of celery with peanut butter.” She paused. “It’s weird, the things you remember.”

“And the things you forget,” Lauren said.

Shane looked at her. “What are you saying?” she asked.

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything. It’s just that we know people often remember the littlest, tiniest, insignificant details, and forget the big, giant details. That’s why we make them repeat their stories over and over again. Sometimes it shakes something loose.”

They went back to reading. After a few minutes Shane put her copy down and starred at the wall. Then she picked up her phone and started checking her e-mail. Carmen and Lauren locked eyes, and Carmen shook her head no, just one millimeter. So Lauren said nothing, and continued reading.

“Scars on her legs,” Lauren said. “Was she a cutter? I don’t think I knew that. Some on her arms, too.”

“She had a problem with it in college,” Carmen said, “but she stopped. Then when she had her big nervous breakdown the morning Angelica was born, Shane and I found her in the bathroom. She had cut her legs and we took her to the hospital, and they treated the cuts and referred her to the psych ward, and that’s how she went back to Illinois for residential treatment.”

“I didn’t know she did that in college,” Shane said. “How’d you know? She tell you?”

“No, not at first,” Carmen said. “But … how can I put this? I got to know her body pretty well.”

“Oh,” Shane said. “Right.”

Carmen and Lauren went back to reading, and Shane found something important in her e-mails, all three of them thinking about the sex that first Carmen and then Shane had had with Jenny. It was the 600-pound gorilla in the room, and they avoided it studiously. Not only had Carmen been Jenny’s lover twice as long as Shane had been, Carmen’s style of lovemaking, of intimacy in general, had been much deeper than Shane’s. Carmen would have found the scars on Jenny’s body, every scar, every blemish, every mole and freckle, no matter where they were, and would have asked, during foreplay or afterglow, what they were from. Shane, who didn’t miss much but couldn’t process fast enough, might have seen them but been distracted, wouldn’t have asked. Never tell your story, never let them tell you theirs. There were scars; so what?

“All right, now we’re getting to it,” Carmen said. “Water in her lungs, matches the water in the pool, and the official cause of death, drowning. I don’t claim to understand some of this but am I right, it just means she had a crack in her skull and a bump on the back of her head? A fractured skull? And a broken left wrist. And some abrasions.”

“Yes,” Lauren said, turning her head slightly and indicating the spot, high on the top of the head about two inches above and behind the left ear. “What all this says is that we think somebody pushed her, she went through the tape backwards and as she fell to the patio she was upside down and the first thing that hit was the back of her head. That’s the bump, and the fracture under it. She would have been unconscious instantly. Very bad concussion. If she cried out when she was pushed, it wasn’t loud enough to be heard. She wouldn’t have screamed when she hit. And that’s when she broke her wrist and got the abrasions, landing on the cement. The pavement area where she landed isn’t very wide, but they found the spot where her head hit, and as the report says, there was a little blood and a few strands of her hair. They no way she could have rolled into the pool. Someone walked down the stairs and rolled her into it. That person would have seen clearly she was unconscious. He – or she – might even have suspected she was dead, and she might have been close to it. But in any case it’s clear she was rolled or placed into the pool, and she was still alive but unconscious. Then she drowned. So it’s not a freak accident, it’s not bad luck, it’s not manslaughter. It’s flat-out homicide. The push up on the deck may not have been intended to kill, it may have just been an unfortunate shoving match or something. But then the killer walked downstairs and put her in the pool. That’s the murder part, for sure.”

They glanced at Shane, whose eyes were filled with tears. She had trouble talking, but dropped the autopsy report and managed to say, “What else?”

“Forensics findings,” Lauren said, holding up another report. “The techs dusted for fingerprints, collected hundreds of them. The report didn’t come back for a week, but by then Alice had confessed and the report sat in the file. But before you get your hopes up, there’s nothing in it. There were prints all over the place, including the railing on the stairwell, but why shouldn’t there be? You were all up and down the steps. They found prints from all of you, plus a couple that turned out to be from the two women carpenters who built the deck and stairs. No prints that couldn’t be explained, no prints from anyone who didn’t belong there.”

“Does that mean the person who pushed Jenny had to be one of the group?” Carmen asked.

“No,” Lauren said. “It only means that whoever pushed her didn’t touch anything else, or if he or she did, the prints got smeared or overprinted. Lots of prints weren’t identifiable only because they were over top of each other. When people climb stairs they tend to put their hands in the same places. Basically the prints mean nothing.”

“Did they fingerprint our house?” Carmen asked.

“No. Why?”

Carmen shrugged. “I was thinking about the pull-down ladder in the closet. And the film canisters.”

“They did print the canisters. Shane prints, Tina’s prints, and a couple of film tech people from the studio, whose prints belong there.”

“Shane and Tina’s prints?” Carmen asked.

Quietly Shane said, “When I saw them, I picked one up and then a second one, to figure out what they were. Then when I got Tina, she picked up one.”

“Means nothing,” Lauren said. “Dead end.”

“Okay, I was just maybe hoping …”

“I know,” Lauren said.

“Jenny’s fingerprints weren’t on them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think she knew the negs were up there,” Shane said. “My jacket was lying on top of them, but when she tossed it up there, she probably never even turned the light on. She probably just pulled down the steps, went halfway up, tossed the jacket, and came back down.”

“If she had seen the canisters, everything probably would have been different,” Lauren said.

“How?” Carmen asked.

“Think about it. Jenny discovers the negs up there. What would she do? Shane?”

Shane frowned.

“What?” Carmen asked.

“She’d think I put them there,” Shane said. “She’d think I was the one who stole them.”

“And then what?” Lauren asked.

“Shitstorm,” Carmen said.

“Shitstorm,” Shane nodded.

“Okay, but why?” Lauren pressed.

“Because I stole her movie,” Shane said.

There was silence for a moment.

“No, wait a minute,” Carmen said. “We’re wrong. Or partly wrong. Shane, I don’t think Jenny would think you did it. You’d have absolutely no motive, and you were sleeping with her, you were her lover, and you are also about the last person on earth who could have stolen the movie, hid it in the attic, and said nothing, done nothing and showed nothing for weeks. Also, Jenny would have known you had no access to them. How would you have stolen them? Did you have any idea what the camera people did with the negatives, where they stored them?”

Shane shook her head no.

“See? Jenny wouldn’t believe you’d done it, not even in that first instant if she’d found them. No.”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “I think I agree. But so what _would_ she think?”

“That she was being set up,” Carmen said.

“Which she was,” Lauren said. “Resulting in … ? ”

“Shitstorm,” Carmen and Shane said, together.

“Right. But no shitstorm. So she didn’t know.”

“Couldn’t have,” Carmen said.

“My brain hurts,” Shane said. “Where does all this leave us?”

“She was pushed off the deck, landed on her head, and was pushed or rolled into the pool, still alive. She didn't know the negs were in the attic. We have nothing else,” Lauren said.

“So back to Square One,” Carmen said.

“Square One,” Lauren confirmed.

“Fuck,” Shane muttered.


	10. Opportunity

They took a bathroom break. Carmen got a diet soda out of the vending machine near the lobby, and Shane got a soda and a bag of Fritos. Lauren got a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator in the break room. Without preamble, she passed out photocopies. “Every homicide case has a timeline prepared. What happened when. Marybeth started one, she didn’t get too far, but it’s a start. We have to finish it.”

The first two pages read:

_Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau_

_Homicide Case 51039 Schecter, Jennifer Diane_

_Date/Time of Homicide: 03/08/2009 Approx 2100 hours to 2115 hours_

_Investigators: Sgt. M. Duffy, Det/2 S. Holden, Homicide Bureau_

_Location: 256 14th Street, West Hollywood CA and adjacent house at 254 14th Street,_

_where vic resided_

_TIMELINE_

_3/08/09 2100 to 2115 approx J. Schecter murdered x drowning_

_3/08/09 2127 Switchboard 911 call from T. Kinnard reporting drowning_

_3/08/09 2134 Squad car C-7 Cpl. R. Richards, Off. T. Hoskins arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2142 Cpl. Richards reports possible homicide_

_3/08/09 2143 Dispatcher call-out to Sgt. M. Duffy, Det/2 S. Holden, Coroner, Forensic Teams_

_3/08/09 2146-8 Squad cars A-6, A-19, K-8 arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2150 Coroner Unit 3 arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2152 CSI forensics team arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2201 Duffy/Holden arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2203 Duffy/Holden briefed, view scene_

_3/08/09 2204 Duffy meets w/ 7 wits + infant_

_3/08/09 2207 Off. T. Williams, off duty, acquaintance of vic/suspects, arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2214 N. Stevens, acquaintance/ex-lover, discovered in bushes by Off. Hoskins_

_3/08/09 2308 7 wits (+ infant) + Stevens asked to go to LASD West Hollywood Station for further_

_questioning_

_3/08/09 2331 8 wits arrive LAPD WHS for further questioning_

_3/09/09 0017 First interrogation A. Pieszecki by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0119 First interrogation B. Porter by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0131 Adjacent residence at 254 14th Street prelim search_

_3/09/09 0148 Coroner removes body of J. Schecter_

_3/09/09 0231 First interrogation T. Kinnard by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0359 First interrogation S. McCutcheon by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0510 First interrogation H. Peabody by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0718 First interrogation K. Porter by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0620 CSI/Forensics departs, scene taped off & restricted_

_3/09/09 0822 First interrogation M. Sweeney by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0926 First interrogation N. Stevens by Duffy/Holden_

_3/10/09 0940 Telephone call from Pieszecki to Duffy requesting another interview_

_3/10/09 1117 Second interrogation A. Pieszecki by Duffy/Holden, Mirandized, confesses to murder of J. Schecter_

_3/10/09 1340 Pieszecki formally arrested by Duffy/Holden_

_3/10/09 1344 Pieszecki calls atty. Joyce Wischnia for legal referral_

_3/10/09 1344 Duffy calls ADA G. Berger, gives update_

_3/10/09 1350 Duffy calls Off. T. Williams for interview_

_3/10/09 1524 Pieszecki taken to holding cell_

_3/11/09 1006 Pieszecki atty. Malcolm Drinkwater arrives, confers with client_

_3/15/09 0756 Forensic report picked up by Duffy_

_3/16/09 0818 Duffy/Holden arrive at coroners for Schecter autopsy_

_3/18/09 1123 Schecter autopsy results delivered_

“That’s as far as Marybeth got,” Lauren said. She passed out more photocopies. “I’ve added some stuff to it, mainly the blanks we need to fill in before and after the part Marybeth completed. Some stuff I filled out. And I changed some last names to first names because … well, just because. And I kind of boxed off the farewell party itself, which is the one we have to work on hardest.”

It read:

_?/??/09 0000 Date believed negatives stolen_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Max tells Jenny Adele is trouble_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Production on Lez Girls begins_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Bike marathon, Jenny/Niki make sex tape_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Shane breaks up w/ Molly_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Adele coup against Jenny on film set_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Lez Girls wrap party, Jenny discovers Shane/Niki sex_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Jenny has sex with Niki, rejects Niki_

_?/??/09 0000 Date believed negatives stolen_

_?/??/09 0000 Date negatives discovered to be missing, who informed when?_

_?/??/09 1800 Baby shower: Jenny tells Dylan about Niki plot, angering Helena_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Jenny sees Bette & Kelly in kitchen sex _

_?/??/09 0000 Jenny threatens to tell Tina about Bette/Kelly_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Alice discovers Jenny stole manuscript/treatment_

_2/??/09 0000 Date Tina/Bette have dinner, Tina accuses William/Aaron of stealing negatives_

_?/??/09 0000 Date Molly returned jacket to Jenny, assume placed in attic_

_3/08/09 0000 Time Shane talks to Molly about letter/jacket_

_3/08/09 0000 Time Shane discovers jacket, negatives_

_3/08/09 0000 Time Shane notifies Tina, Tina sees negatives_

_\--------------------_

_3/08/09 0000 Times girls arrived at party_

_3/08/09 0000 Comings and goings at party_

_3/08/09 0000 Last time Jenny seen alive by ??_

_3/08/09 2100 to 2115 approx Jenny pushed through railing, drowned_

_\---------------------_

_3/08/09 2127 Switchboard 911 call from Tina reporting drowning_

_3/08/09 2134 Squad car C-7 Cpl. R Richards, Off. T. Hoskins arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2142 Cpl. Richards reports possible homicide_

_3/08/09 2143 Dispatcher call-out to Sgt. M. Duffy, Det/2 S. Holden, Coroner, Forensic Teams_

_3/08/09 2146-8 Squad cars A-6, A-19, K-8 arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2150 Coroner Unit 3 arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2152 CSI forensics team arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2201 Duffy/Holden arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2203 Duffy/Holden briefed view scene_

_3/08/09 2204 Duffy meets w/ 7 wits + infant_

_3/08/09 2207 Off. Tasha Williams, off duty, acquaintance/Alice ex-lover, arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2214 Niki, acquaintance/ex-lover, discovered in bushes by Off. Hoskins_

_3/08/09 2308 7 wits (+ infant) + Niki asked to go to LASD West Hollywood Station for further_

_questioning_

_3/08/09 2331 8 wits arrive LAPD WHS for further questioning_

_3/09/09 0017 First interrogation Alice by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0119 First interrogation Bette by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0131 Adjacent residence at 254 14th Street prelim search_

_3/09/09 0148 Coroner removes Jenny, taken to morgue_

_3/09/09 0231 First interrogation Tina by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0359 First interrogation Shane by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0510 First interrogation Helena by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0620 CSI/Forensics departs, scene taped off & restricted_

_3/09/09 0718 First interrogation Kit by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0822 First interrogation Max by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0926 First interrogation Niki by Duffy/Holden_

_3/10/09 0940 Telephone call from Alice to Duffy requesting another interview_

_3/10/09 1117 Second interrogation Alice by Duffy/Holden, Mirandized, confesses to murder of Jenny_

_3/10/09 1344 Pieszecki calls atty. Joyce Wischnia for legal referral_

_3/10/09 1344 Duffy calls ADA G. Berger, gives update_

_3/10/09 1350 Duffy calls Tasha Williams for interview_

_3/10/09 1524 Alice taken to holding cell_

_3/11/09 1006 Alice’s atty. Malcolm Drinkwater arrives, confers with client_

_3/12/09 0930 Interview with Tasha_

_3/16/09 0756 Forensic report picked up by Duffy_

_3/16/09 0818 Duffy/Holden arrive at coroner for Jenny autopsy_

_3/18/09 1123 Jenny autopsy results delivered_

_4/01/09 Alice preliminary hearing, pleads guilty_

_4/05/09 Alice bail hearing, no bail requested, no bail set_

_4/27/09 Grand jury indictment (pro forma)_

_5/13/09 Alice trial expedited by guilty plea, pled down to second degree manslaughter_

_5/26/09 Alice sentencing hearing, 7-10 years_

_5/27/09 Alice arrives Humboldt Farm_

Carmen finished reading and glanced at Shane. A tear ran down Shane’s cheek. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Shane said quietly. “This is just a lot harder than I thought it would be. Harder, and different. I don’t know what I expected, but … it’s just hard.”

“I know. Seeing Jenny reduced to paperwork. Cop jargon, legal jargon. Medical jargon. Shane, keep this in mind: This isn’t our Jenny they’re talking about. It’s somebody else. It's a dead body. It's not anybody we know.”

“I guess, if you say so. Kinda hard to do.”

Lauren let Shane finish reading. “Shane, I hate to say this,” she said quietly, “but you’re going to have to take the lead on this timeline. You know a lot of the dates and times. Do you keep a calendar or datebook in your phone? Or written down somewhere?”

“On my phone.”

“Do you still have February and March 2009? Or do you erase back stuff?”

“No, I don’t erase. Maybe I should, but I don’t.”

“Well, that turns out to be good for us. Can you bring up February?”

“Yes,” she said, working on her phone, “but I can give you some things off the top of my head. It was about 4:30, 5 o’clock when I talked to Molly and she told me about the letter and returning my jacket. I was shopping for a farewell present for Bette and Tina, I had picked out this big bowl I thought they’d like, like a table centerpiece bowl, you know? And that’s when I ran into Molly. And then I went straight home, I didn’t even get the bowl, I was so pissed. I guess it was after 5 when I got home, like 5:30, maybe going on 6. It was starting to get dark. Anybody know when it got dark on that day?”

Carmen said, “I got it.” She Googled something on her phone and after a moment she said, “Sundown, March 8, 2009, 6:55 p.m.”

“Okay,” Shane said. “So let’s say I talked to Molly around 5 and got home about 6.”

“Then what happened?” Lauren asked.

“I immediately started searching the house. I went to her closet, started looking in boxes and stuff. And after, I don’t know, fifteen minutes, I thought about the attic and pulled the stairs down. I went up, and found my jacket, and the letter. I sat on the top step and read the letter. I – it took a while. Finally, I stood up to leave, and I was partly sitting on this sheet that was covering some boxes, and when I stood up it pulled away, and then I saw the canisters under it. I picked one up. I thought, holy shit, Jenny, you bitch, you fucking cunt. I’m sorry, but that’s what I thought. And I went next door to go get Tina. It was getting dark outside, so maybe a little after 7? Something like that. I went into Bette and Tina’s house, and everybody was already there, I think, but in different places, upstairs, downstairs. I didn't see Jenny right then, which was a good thing. Tina was in the kitchen. I asked her to come next door. She asked why. I said, just trust me. So we went to our house and into the bedroom and up into the attic. Seven fifteen? Seven thirty? Is any of this important?”

“We generally don’t ask if something is important,” Lauren said, “until after we’ve got all the information. Then we can go back and decide what’s important and what’s not.” She had called up the timeline on her laptop and made entries.

_3/08/09 1700 Shane talks to Molly about letter/jacket_

_3/08/09 1830 Shane discovers jacket, negatives_

_3/08/09 1830-1900 Times wits/suspect arrived at party_

_3/08/09 1910 Shane notifies Tina, Tina sees negatives_

“Great,” Lauren said. “What’s in your calendar?”

“Uh,” Shane mumbled, working. “Okay, Subaru Pink Ride, September 22 and 23.”

_09/22-3/08 Subaru Pink Ride bike marathon, Jenny/Niki make sex tape_

Lauren let Shane work.

“The baby shower for Max was February 14,” Shane said. “Started at 6 p.m.”

“Yeah, that’s what I have, too,” Carmen said, working on her cellphone. Shane looked at her. “What?” Carmen asked. “I sent them a present for the baby.”

_2/22/09 1800 Baby shower; Jenny tells Dylan about Niki plot, angering Helena_

“They started shooting the movie on Tuesday, September 2,” Carmen said. “I know because it was the day after the three-day Labor Day weekend. Jenny came up to San Francisco for a visit, and she was really wired about the movie starting up.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Shane said. “I don’t remember what date it was, but she flew home to visit her folks in Skokie that weekend. I drove her to the airport that Friday afternoon.”

Carmen kept her eyes on her cellphone. “I know you did. She lied to you. You dropped her at the terminal, but she got on a different plane than you thought, that’s all. She told me when she got to San Francisco.”

“Fuck!” Shane said. “She lied? What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Carmen said. “What, did you think I was going to call you up and say, ‘By the way, Jenny’s here with me, she’s not in Illinois. She’s a big fibber.’ Why would I do that? It’s not like Jenny hasn’t lied to somebody a couple hundred times. At least this one was pretty harmless and nobody got hurt. She knew you’d get all bent out of shape if she told you she was coming to visit me for a few days. She did you a favor, if you ask me.”

Shane was, as often before, rendered speechless. Had Carmen and Jenny rekindled their old relationship? Or bluntly put, did they re-fuck? People slept with their exes all the time, even lesbians. Maybe even especially lesbians, judging by her own small circle of friends … and herself, witness Cherie Peroni. Although an early adopter where sex was concerned, Shane was a latecomer to the concept of “relationships.” Love-and-marriage were widely known to be linked together, but very often so were sex-and-exes. Shane was very good at one and very bad at the other. It was like loving to eat food but being terrible at digesting it. If only there was some gluten-free, low-calorie way to eat pussy, without orgasm proteins building all those post-coital bonds and links and feelings and relationships. Maybe Shane had emotional celiac disease.

_09/02/08 Production on Lez Girls begins_

“Do you have the wrap party?” Lauren asked.

Shane looked at Lauren blankly, then snapped out of it. She looked at her cell phone. “The wrap party was Saturday night, January 24,” Shane said, “but the actual wrap was on Wednesday. They needed a few days to arrange the party on short notice.”

“What time?”

“Six. It was supposed to start at six. And the sun was still up when I got there.” __  
  


_1/24/09 1800 Lez Girls wrap party, Jenny discovers Shane/Niki sex. Shane evicted._

“Got more?”

“Niki told me the next night Jenny invited her over and they fucked all night long, then in the morning Jenny kicked her out.”

_1/26/09 Morning -- Jenny has all-night sex w/ Niki, rejects her in the morning_

Lauren looked over the timeline. “We’re making progress. Do you remember when Adele took over the movie from Jenny?”

“It was between Christmas and New Year’s. The first Monday after Christmas.” Everyone looked at their cellphones.

“December 29, 2008,” Lauren said. “It happened in the morning?”

“It was getting close to lunch,” Shane said.

_12/29/08 circa 1100 Adele coup against Jenny on film set_

Lauren tapped her pencil on the desk. “Carmen, here’s a question in your wheelhouse. They wrap filming on a Wednesday. I’m guessing the film from the last day’s shooting goes to be developed, right? And then they get it back. And then the film editors start working on it, is that right? So how long does all this take?”

“They can get the developed negs back pretty quick, in a day or two, because everyone wants to make sure the film’s okay, before they send everybody home forever and tear down the sets. In case they need to re-shoot anything. So yeah, if they wrap on a Wednesday they’d have the film back – or at least they’d get an okay on it, a telephone call, you’re good to go – sometime Friday, maybe late in the day. And that would help with the wrap party, too, because if something needed re-shooting, they’d have had to tell the relevant people.”

“Would they have cancelled the party?”

“Oh, no, almost certainly not. The wrap party is just kind of ceremonial, because the production really isn’t done, by a long shot. Just the principal photography and the actors and what-not. But the editing and all the post-production work, and distribution stuff, the promotion. A ton of post-production stuff, that all starts first thing Monday morning. Tearing down the sets. Cleaning up the actors’ trailers and returning them to the rental people. Costumes, cleaning them, returning them. You know, all the bookkeeping and accounting stuff, it still continues because it ain’t over until the fat lady sings. And anyway, a lot of the editing has been going on while they’ve been shooting, but how much they’ve got done by wrap varies all over the lot. Depends on how involved the director wants to be. If he or she wants to be there for editing, they basically can’t start until photography is finished and the director’s freed up. Then there’s what they call ‘second unit’ stuff, like sunsets, rain, birds, aerials, skylines, whatever they need for establishing shots. That could be shot at any time, before, during, after.”

“Do you know anything about the editing for _Lez Girls_?”

“No, nothing. But I don’t think it matters.”

“Why not?”

“Because the film canisters could have been stolen at any time during the editing process. It could have already been half-cut, half-finished for all I know. Two-thirds cut, if they were really efficient and working without director input. Or they hadn’t even started. I can’t say which. Somebody would have to ask the editors how far they'd gotten, or checked their logbooks and reports, etc. Was the movie actually finished? Only just started editing? Halfway? I don't think anybody knows.”

“So where would the canisters have been kept? Where were they stolen from?”

“Again, I don’t know. But if I was guessing, I’d say they were most likely in some editing room somewhere. We’d need to talk to the actual editors, the cutters. What kind of work hours they kept. But for the most part, except for the Type-A editors and directors, it’s pretty much a Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five job. They probably returned the canisters to some vault or storage thing over the weekend, unless somebody was going to work on them.”

“Okay, they finish filming on the 21st, the wrap party is Saturday the 24th. They get the film back on Monday the 26th and start or continue editing and cutting, right.”

“Sounds okay,” Carmen said.

“And Jenny fucks Niki all Sunday night and kicks her out Monday morning, and as the film gets back from the developing people and editing begins or continues. They work all day. So can we assume the window for the theft of the canisters opens some time after work on Monday the 26th?”

“Again, sounds reasonable.”

“Could they have been stolen during the day?”

“With all those people around? No.”

“Don’t they break for lunch?”

“Sure. And they take smoke breaks if they smoke, and go get a soda, and pick up their dry-cleaning, whatever. But I don’t think anyone could slip in during the day and collect all the canisters, There would be pieces of film everywhere, in the splicer, being viewed. Maybe Adele and a couple people doing it, not just one. And anyway, half the editors I’ve met eat at their consoles, or run to the cafeteria if there’s no craft services table. It’s not like they all break at noon and go away for an hour.”

“Okay, you sold me,” Lauren said.

_1/26/09 After 6 p.m.? Window opens for negatives to be stolen. Niki jilted that morning_

“Why don’t we just ask Niki when and how she stole them?” Shane asked.

“We’re going to. But we like to know the answers to questions before we ask them. Pretty standard cop and courtroom rule.”

Shane put her head down on the table. “My head hurts. Can I go home?”

“Your head hurt yesterday,” Lauren said.

“I know. It hurts today, too.”

“It’s a toomah,” Carmen said, using the Arnold Schwarzenegger pronunciation of “tumor.”

“It’s not a toomah,” Lauren said.

“What? A toomah? What’s a toomah?”

“It’s not a toomah,” Carmen said.

“Tumor,” Lauren said. “Never mind. It’s a punchline from an old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Yes, we can knock off for the day. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“And … scene!” Carmen said.

When they were gone, Lauren locked the door to the conference and went off to brief Marybeth and make some phone calls.

* * *

When they returned to the conference room the next morning, Lauren began with, “Okay, I’ve got some news. We were all wrong about how the canisters got stolen. Last night I talked to Aaron Kornbluth at the studio and this morning at six a.m. I called Tina in New York, since they are three hours ahead of us. Basically they both tell me the same story. The name of the film lab doing the developing was Deluxe Motion Picture Labs--” and looked at Carmen.

She nodded, “Yeah, I know them. Lots of studios use them. Big outfit.”

“That’s what Aaron said. Anyway, Deluxe was backed up all that week and weekend. They called somebody or other at the studio and told them the negs came out okay, but that they couldn’t ship them out until late Monday afternoon. Somebody said that was fine. And then here’s where it gets interesting sometime in mid-afternoon, Deluxe got faxed a letter on the studio letterhead telling them a messenger service would come by at 8 p.m. to pick up the negs. It was somebody called Eastside Messengers.” Again she looked at Carmen.

“Sure,” Carmen said. “They aren’t all that big, but I’ve heard of them.”

“Right. And here’s the thing. Aaron says that fax was signed by Tina.”

“No fucking way,” Shane muttered. She had been half asleep and slouched on the table nursing a coffee, but was fully alert now.

“I know,” Lauren said, “and Aaron says when he first told Tina about it Tuesday mid-morning, she denied it vehemently. And he says the more he thought about it the more he agreed Tina hadn’t done it, but that somebody had forged her name. And Tina tells me basically the same version, Aaron confronted her, waving around a copy of the letter fax, he was furious, she was furious, she denied it, he told her to find out who, blah blah, everybody yelling. So anyway, about 8 p.m. Monday night a messenger goes to Deluxe Labs, picks up the canisters, and delivers them to …” Lauren paused dramatically, looking from one to the other.

Shane shrugged.

“Jennifer Schecter,” Carmen said.

“Almost. Delivered to Wilson/Cramer Productions--”

“Who?” Carmen asked.

“They’re a small porno production outfit out in the valley. But wait for it … Wilson/Cramer Productions, attention …?”

“Jennifer Schecter.”

“Bingo.”

“Fuck,” Shane said.

“But Jenny didn’t get them, any more than Tina signed the letter authorizing the pickup.”

“Because whoever did it, and we now know it’s Niki, figured the canister delivery would be traced, and when they saw Jenny’s name as being the person who was supposed to receive them, they’d get a warrant and go search Shane and Jenny’s house--”

“—and find the canisters in the attic,” Carmen finished.

“Give the little lady a kewpie doll.”

“Wouldn’t they also blame Tina as being part of the scam?” Shane asked.

“No,” Carmen said, “because they conclude that Jenny was the one who had forged Tina’s name and sent the fax to Deluxe. Somebody might do a handwriting analysis on the original of the letter and determine it wasn’t Tina’s signature.”

“Would they discover it was Niki’s handwriting?” Shane asked.

“It was an unreadable scribble. For one thing I’d guess it was Niki who faxed it, but that doesn’t mean she signed it. She has all these minions, all her posse hanging around with here. She could have gotten anybody to sign it, just as she could have sent somebody out to the valley to pick up the canisters from that editing outfit. Anyway, most signatures are just unreadable scrawls, and this one was.”

“I had no idea Niki was that clever,” Carmen said.

“No, me either,” Lauren said. “We’re going to have to re-think her.”

“I have a question about the lab. Why did they have all the negatives? What I mean is, shouldn’t they have had only the last few days of shooting? Maybe only the last day? Usually over the course of a shoot you get your negs back in increments.”

“Aaron actually told me about that. Seems that goes back to Jenny. When she was still director – and I’m guessing she was something of a control freak, from everything I’ve learned about her – she insisted on having oversight of the editing as well, she wanted to be in the room. Because of that, there was no need to get the negs back in increments, so they kept them all until the shooting was done, on the last day, because no editing had started yet. And then when Jenny got replaced by Adele, nobody changed that procedure. Aaron thinks Adele would have wanted the same plan anyway. So no, they didn’t need the negs back until filming wrapped.”

“What about Wilson/Cramer Productions?” Carmen asked.

“Care to guess?”

“Uh, let’s see. No longer in business. Gone. Folded up shop. It was some porn outfit, now probably working out of a different location under a different name. But nobody to ask who picked up the canisters or when. Not that the time matters, that night or the next day. And whether it was Niki or a minion.”

“Jeez, you’re a psychic. Who could have guessed?”

“It’s actually pretty simple,” Carmen mussed, thinking out loud. “If the murder had nothing to do with the negatives, none of these tiny details matter. But if the murder is all about the negatives, ever single tiny detail is crucial.”

“Right,” Lauren said.

“I can’t believe nobody knew all this back then,” Shane said.

“Ah, there we come full circle. The canisters weren’t discovered until the evening of Jenny’s murder. That entire trail of evidence, falsely pointing to Jenny, would have eventually been discovered, if … ?” She looked at Shane and Carmen.

“If Alice hadn’t confessed,” Carmen said.

“If Alice hadn’t confessed, which rendered everything having to do with the film negatives moot and irrelevant. Alice had no connection to the negs, no access, probably even not a shred of knowledge about their existence or where they were, or anything. She had her own motive to kill Jenny and it had nothing to do with the negatives, it had to do with Jenny stealing Alice’s screenplay treatment, and then covering for Shane--”

“—who also didn’t do it,” Carmen agreed.

“--and when we talk to Niki, we’re going to go all over this with a fine-tooth comb, even if there’s no prosecution for the theft part.”

“What’s that mean?” Shane asked.

“I told you the studio had no interest in pressing charges and they wanted to bury the whole sorry mess,” Lauren said. “However, if we determine it was Niki who killed Jenny, then it all comes back into play. So because of that possibility, we’ve got to keep and preserve as much of this evidence as we can. Last night I talked to Marybeth, and she gave me permission to tell Aaron we’re formally looking at Jenny’s murder again and that he’s not allowed to destroy anything related to the movie in any way, shape or form.”

“Did you tell him anything about Niki becoming a suspect?” Carmen asked.

“No, not specifically, but I did say we’re looking at the theft of the movie as just one possibility. And I gave him a little misdirection. I hinted we’re looking at both you and Tina, more than Niki. Mostly you.”

“Why’d you tell him that?” Shane asked, anger in her voice.

“Because I knew he’d like it,” Lauren said. “He doesn’t want Niki or Tina connected to the murder if he can help it, because they’re his people, and intimately connected to the movie. But you, you’re just a freelance hairdresser, not a studio employee, as well as Jenny’s lover. A ‘domestic,’ a lesbian lover’s quarrel, nothing to do with studio politics. He can live with that just fine.”

“Shane,” Carmen said quietly, “it’s the smart move. And remember, we haven’t eliminated Aaron as a suspect, either, although he’s not high on our list.”

“And everybody thinks I did it, anyway,” Shane sulked.

“Shane,” Lauren said, “we’re using that to our advantage. I know it’s hard on you, but we have to use the tools we've got. That’s one of them.”

“Okay,” Shane muttered. “I get it.” She let a beat go by. “I’m a tool.” But she was smiling, and Lauren and Carmen laughed.

“Now you’ve got it,” Lauren said.


	11. All About Eve

Lauren swung by to pick up Carmen at her mom’s house at 8 a.m. They ate breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall Hispanic cafe on North Broadway in Lincoln Park where Carmen had waited tables in her high school and college years. She had remained friends with the owners, Ramon and Rosita Florio, and their family and staff, and stopped in whenever she was in LA. On her recommendation Lauren had the _chilaquiles con huevos verde_ , and the _café de la olla_ , sweet and hinting of cinnamon, was out of sight.

When they were done they picked up Shane at Alice’s apartment at 9. This was a compromise between early-birds Carmen and Lauren wanting to get started early, and Shane wanting to sleep in until noon. Predictably, Shane was barely awake and still in her underwear, and they waited in Alice’s living room while Shane got dressed and chugged a cup of coffee. Lauren, at Carmen’s suggestion, had built the wait into their schedule. They got to the studio at 10, and were in Adele’s trailer in an alley behind a sound stage at 5 after 10, for a meeting set for 10 a.m. Adele entered the trailer at 10:20; Lauren had built that delay into the schedule at Shane’s suggestion. If you showed up on time, it meant you weren’t important. A minion had told them to make themselves at home in the trailer and offered water or coffee, which they declined.

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” Adele began, “Story conferences can be clusterfucks. You know how writers are.”

You might have murdered one, Carmen and Lauren both thought, although neither said anything. Lauren smiled and flashed her badge. “Sgt. Lauren Hancock,” she said, “and this is Carmen Morales. You know Shane, of course.”

“Shane,” Adele said, shaking hands. “Good to see you again.”

“Adele,” Shane said, cool.

“Sit down everybody. Did Tabitha offer you water or coffee? Okay, good.” Adele stuck her head out the trailer door and they heard her say to someone, “Tabs, I’m parched. Can I get a cucumber water with lime, please?”

Adele sat herself down in a swivel captain’s chair across from the couch where Lauren and Shane sat; Carmen had taken the other captain’s chair. “So. Why are we here? I heard you’re investigating Jenny’s murder again.”

“That’s right,” Lauren began, having agreed to be the lead this morning. “We have pretty good reason to believe Alice didn’t do it, so we’re taking a fresh look at it. There were lots of leads and lots of motives and suspects who never got properly tracked down.”

“So this is like an episode from the _Cold Case_ files,” Adele said.

“Sort of, but not that cold, actually,” Lauren said. “Maybe only mildly chilly. One of the avenues we want to pursue are the stolen film negatives from _Lez Girls_.”

“Nike Stevens stole them, right? That’s what Aaron told me. It wasn’t Jenny, after all.”

“Right, she did. And probably was the one who planted them in the attic of Jenny and Shane’s house. You’re aware they were discovered there the evening of Jenny’s murder, correct?”

“Yes, that’s what I heard. And you think there’s a connection.”

“That’s what we’re looking at, yes.”

“Pardon me for being a little … um … undiplomatic, but why didn’t the police look into it at the time?” Adele said.

“For the simple reason Alice confessed,” Carmen interrupted Lauren. She was doing a slow burn inside and needed to let off a little steam. She had never met Adele, but had heard plenty about her from Jenny, and afterward from Tina and some from Alice. She was thoroughly prepared to hate Adele on the spot, and was pleased to find out that’s exactly how she felt. But she was so aware of it she knew she had to modulate her voice and body language. She was doing so now.

Lauren jumped in. “Carmen’s right. Alice’s confession knocked a thorough investigation into a cocked hat. Alice had nothing to do with the negatives or the movie, and there was no reason to spend any more time on it, so nobody did. It was nobody’s fault, well, nobody except Alice. But yes, we’re now trying to fix that oversight. So what can you tell us about the negatives?”

Adele shrugged. “Not much. I heard about them being missing right when everybody else did. I mean, you know, Aaron and Tina. I was in a meeting with some promotion and advertising people in a conference room down the hall from Aaron’s office--” Tabitha came in and put Adele’s glass of cucumber water on her desk and exited silently – “There was a lot of coming and going in his suite, and everybody could hear some yelling. Pretty soon Tina came in, I guess Aaron told her to get her ass in there, and then more yelling, and she stomped out. After my meeting I went to the set, they were dismantling it, and found Tina. ‘What the fuck was THAT all about?’ I asked. She told me the negatives were stolen, and that Aaron had accused her of taking them. She was pretty angry. You should have heard her.”

“We did hear her,” Shane said quietly. Everybody laughed.

“You talk to Aaron?” Lauren asked.

“Sure, right after Tina told me. I mean, that was my movie, you know? I took over from Jenny--”

\--Right after you stabbed her in the back, Lauren, Carmen and Shane all thought simultaneously –

“—so I was really pissed.”

“What did Aaron say?”

“That the negs were ‘unaccounted for.’ That was what he said, ‘unaccounted for.’ I said, ‘You mean stolen, right?’ He said, ‘Fucking A, stolen.’ I said, ‘Tina says you said she did it.’ He says, ‘Yeah I said that, but now I think about it, I’m pretty sure she was set up.’ So I say, “By who? That cunt Jenny?’ Sorry, but that’s what I said. He says, ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve got the security office investigating it.’ I say, ‘Now what?’ He says, ‘Go back to work, keep doing what you were doing. We’ve got to assume we’ll find them, get them back, buy them back, pay the extortion, whatever it takes. Let me worry about it. You keep on with the post-production. Oh, and don’t talk about it to anybody just yet, until we know exactly what happened.’”

“He said that? Pay the extortion?”

“Sure, he said it. Why?”

“Just curious,” Lauren said. “I mean, it indicates he had an idea already about why they were stolen.”

“Well, maybe,” Adele said. “But it’s the first thing popped into my mind, too. Somebody stole them and we were gonna get a ransom demand for them.”

“You never thought anybody would take them so they could destroy them?”

“To tell you the truth, no, that never crossed my mind. Somebody or other suggested it, but I never gave it a serious thought. I figured it was either about money or revenge, or a combination. I mean, if it was Jenny who took them, I can see her having both motives, money and revenge. Right?” She held her hands apart as though that much was obvious.

“Jenny was really pissed that you replaced her, got her fired and kicked off the lot,” Lauren said, very matter-of-fact.

“Well, yes. And I know where you’re going. It makes me a suspect.”

“Yes, it does.”

Adele shrugged. “So ask me what you want. I didn’t kill her, if that helps. But remember, she was mad at me, I wasn’t angry at her.”

“Not until you thought she stole your movie.”

“Jenny’s movie,” Shane said quietly. Adele looked at her but ignored the comment.

“What I did I did for the good of the project, the movie, and for the good of the studio,” Adele said. “To be perfectly frank, Jenny was out-of-control, and her fucking Niki Stevens _and_ doing it all so publicly was really going to hurt us, as well as tarnish if not ruin Niki’s career. So yes, sure, I know what you’re thinking, I plotted and schemed and got her kicked off the set and out of the studio. Yep. I plead guilty. Did it. You nailed me. But see, what’s why I didn’t kill her. I won, she lost. So there was no point to killing her. To be even more blunt about it, her getting killed just made a small, containable scandal into a much bigger, uncontainable one. Her murder made a huge mess. Before, it’s just extortion or ransom, Aaron quietly forks over the money, we get the negs back, life goes on. Can you find any possible reason why I, of all people, would have wanted a police investigation into a murder? I mean, shit, come on, girls.”

Carmen thought about strangling Adele, never mind there was a cop in the room. Maybe Lauren would look the other way for a few minutes, ignore the gurgling sounds as Adele's face turned purple and she died. But Carmen kept a straight face. For a dollar, Shane would have slit Adele’s throat and pissed down her neck, never mind there was a cop in the room.

“Do you have an alibi for that evening,” Lauren asked.

“Sad to say, no,” Adele said. “I mean, I was home alone. Watching TV, working on a new movie, pre-production stuff. But no alibi.” She shrugged again, fuck you, Officer Hancock.

“The murder was a Sunday evening. You were working?”

“Carmen, you can explain,” Adele said.

Carmen inhaled, let her breath out. “She means movie people are workaholics, they work on stuff twenty-four, seven, three sixty-five.”

“You had the TV on? You remember what you watched?” Lauren asked.

“Not really, no. I just have the TV on for background noise. _60 Minutes_ , that was on, I think. That lezzie show on Showtime, sometimes I watches that to see who’s fucking who. I think it was near the end of its season. Whatever it was, I don’t remember it. Sorry.”

“Aaron transferred you to become an assistant producer, is that right?” Lauren asked. “What’s that entail? What does an assistant producer do?”

“Again, Carmen was a PA, she can tell you. ‘Assistant producer’ is really a kind of meaningless, catch-all title. Sometimes they just give it out and it doesn’t mean anything. But basically I report to Aaron, and he gives me stuff to work on. Location scouting and arranging. Running some production meetings, scheduling, coordinating with departments like wardrobe and make-up and sets, craft services, whatever needs doing. Sometimes script consulting, sometimes I do some second unit producing and even directing, I was second unit director on _Malibu Zombies_. I know, a shitty movie, but somebody’s got to do the work, you know, and that’s how you build your portfolio and learn your craft. I’m kind of Aaron’s troubleshooter, too, I run odd jobs and stuff. Eyes and ears. Administrative assistant. Gal Friday.”

Studio snitch, Carmen thought. Studio bitch, Shane thought.

“How’d you hear about Jenny’s murder?” Lauren asked.

“Aaron called me out of a meeting first thing Monday morning. ‘My office, right now,’ he says. ‘We got a shitstorm.’ I go to his office and there’s five or six people in there, watching TV, a breaking news story, West Hollywood murder, lesbians, fired studio director, blah blah. You all probably saw it, too, it was all over the news for a day or two.”

“Did you go to the memorial service?”

“You fucking kidding me? Jenny’s posse was there, Shane, Carmen, Tina, Bette, all of them, they’d have torn me limb from limb if I showed up,” Adele said. She looked at Shane and Carmen. “I mean, no offense, guys, but you would have, right? I wasn’t exactly welcome. Aaron and William went, and some other studio suits.”

Shane just looked out the window of the trailer. “I wasn’t able to be there,” Carmen said.

“Point taken” Lauren said. “Tell me what was in your head at the time. What did you think, back then? And what do you think now?”

“About who killed her?”

“About everything. Who killed her, and why. About the stolen negatives. Who do you think are good suspects? Tell what you’re thinking right now.”

“Right now? I hate to say it, but I think there’s one good suspect in this room right at this minute.”

“Fuck you,” Shane whispered, not even looking at Adele.

“Shane didn’t do it,” Lauren said crisply. “So who else? Niki Stevens?”

“Oh, sure. She's a candidate. That’s one fucked-up girl. I’m not sure she’s smart enough to kill anybody, she’s usually too drunk or stoned. But if she did it, it must have been right after an AA meeting or a drug test, before she had a chance to re-load.”

“What would have been her motive?”

“Crazy people don’t need motive,” Adele said. “It could have been a minor passing whim. A bad mood. A thrill. There’s snakes inside that girl’s head. And don’t forget her posse. Could have been one of them, doing it based on a casual idea that flitted across Niki’s brain for an instant. It’s hard to tell or be specific.”

“I understand she’s in rehab at the moment.”

“Last I heard,” Adele said. “I think she has rehab on retainer and speed-dial. Maybe this time it’ll fix what the previous four or five rehabs couldn’t.”

“Did you ever sleep with her?” Lauren asked.

Adele hooted. “Fuck, no. Are you kidding? Ah, no. How can I say this? Ewwwwww.”

“You ever sleep with Jenny?”

“No, never,” Adele said, suddenly brought to seriousness.

“Why not?”

“Mutual lack of interest,” Adele said. She kept eye contact with Lauren. Shane never took her gaze from the window. Adele was on the verge of saying, “I don’t like sloppy seconds,” but realized both Shane and Carmen would probably kill her on the spot before Lauren could draw her gun.

“You know Jenny didn’t steal the negatives,” Lauren said, deliberately jumping back and forth from topic to topic.

“That’s what Aaron said.”

“Why do you think Niki did it?”

“You’re asking me to read that woman’s mind?” Adele asked, smiling. “That’s like, you know. Impossible.”

“She made it look like Jenny did it. Framed her.”

“Yes, that’s what I heard.”

“Got any idea why?”

“Beyond extortion, you mean? Or revenge? To get back at Jenny, I guess. God knows what Jenny did to deserve it. God knows, there was plenty of foreplay.”

Lauren let that go. “Let’s talk about Tina as a suspect.”

“Suspect how? Killing Jenny or stealing the negatives with Niki?”

“Either one.”

“Nah, no way. Neither.”

“Why not?”

Adele swiveled back and forth in her captain’s chair while she thought. “Let me put this politely. I like Tina, I thought she did a good job on _Lez Girls_. She has good management skills. But, here’s where I’m hesitating. Tina lacks a killer instinct. I’m not talking about murder, I just mean business, studio politics, handling people, especially actors and writers and directors, you know? She’s good, I’m not saying she isn’t. But I’d like to play poker against her. I’d call her bluff every time. I don’t think she’s tough enough. So no, she wouldn’t kill anybody. She doesn’t have it in her.” She turned to Carmen and Shane. “Guys? You agree? Did I say anything you don’t agree with?”

Shane never looked away from the window, and Carmen’s face was stone.

“Have you ever been to Jenny’s house?” Lauren asked.

“Couple of times. Three times, I think. Once I gave her a ride home when her car was in the shop, twice to drop off some work.”

“Were you ever inside the house?”

“No, never.”

“Never been in Jenny’s bedroom?”

“You’re shitting me. No, never.”

“Do you have a police record?” Adele stiffened. “Well? I can find out with a simple phone call.”

“Some stuff when I was a teenager. Stupid kid shit. One drunk driving, six years ago.”

“Nothing else?”

“I dated Charles Manson and I'm a spy for the Chinese. No, nothing else.”

“How much did it cost to make _Lez Girls_? How much did the studio lose?”

“Cost was about four point seven million, and change. It would have cost a lot more, but it was never finished. Never edited, virtually no post-production costs, no promotion. I have no idea what’s on the books.”

“Why not? You were the director, at the end.”

“Sure. But even directors don’t see the books. Carmen, help me out here. Studio accounting practices are … how can I put this?”

“Creative,” Carmen said. “Whatever paperwork and cost figures anyone would have showed Adele wouldn’t mean anything. She could be telling us the God’s honest truth about finances and costs as she believes them to be, and be completely honest and sincere and truthful, and still be wrong by 500 percent. Her numbers could be one hundred percent accurate down to the penny, and still be different from what the books say by, oh, seven hundred percent.”

“Right,” Adele said. “Exactly.” She turned to Lauren. “That one knows her stuff.”

“It’s why we keep her around,” Lauren said, “that and her mom’s cooking. Tell me about Aaron and William.”

That surprised Adele. “Aaron? What do you want to know about him for? And William is some kind of money guy. They call them angels in this business.”

“Is he?”

“Is he what?”

“An angel. You ever sleep with him?”

Adele burst out laughing and swiveled in her chair a full three hundred and sixty degrees. “Now you are just playing with me. You ever see him?”

“You make an excellent point,” Lauren said. “Ambitious young women never fuck ugly old men just to get their money, especially in a place like Hollywood. I withdraw the question. You ever sleep with Aaron?”

This time Adele kept it simple. “No. I never slept with Aaron. To be perfectly truthful, I don’t even know what his orientation is. According to rumor, he’s divorced, but from who or what I can’t say.”

“Come on, there must be studio gossip.”

“Sure there’s gossip, but I’ve got to tell you, it isn’t very good. Kind of boring, and very poorly sourced. Look, he’s a power guy, and into money, like William is. He plays his cards close to the chest, he’s not a skirt-chaser or a boy chaser, for that matter. Whatever it is he likes, he does it far from public view. You ask me, he never has sex with anything, even sheep, but that’s just an uninformed wild guess. People often think the movie industry is all about sex. It isn't. It's just another power game.”

“Good to know. He likes money and power. Would he or William kill for it? Or hire somebody to kill for it? In their eyes, at least for a little while, it looked like Jenny cost them four point whatever million dollars. Yes? No?”

“That’s an accounting question, as far as I’m concerned,” Adele said, “and I don’t know much about accounting. I’m told the movie cost four million whatever. Did it come out of their pockets? I have no fucking idea. Did they write it off? Was there some kind of insurance? Was it financed by somebody else? Were there other investors besides William? That’s all way, way above my pay grade, Detective Hancock.”

“One last question. When the shit all hit the fan here, Aaron pretty much cleaned house, am I right? So how did you keep your job?”

They all saw anger flash across Adele's eyes, and then as rapidly as it came it passed. They were impressed with her self-control. "I kept my job because I'm good at it," she said, "and in my own way, I'm loyal, and Aaron knows it. Am I a bitch, a snitch and a backstabber? Sure. But I'm Aaron's bitch, snitch and backstabber. Even apart from that, I earn my pay, every day, twenty-four, seven, three sixty-five, and not on my back or my knees. Any more questions?"

"You want to be head of this studio someday. That's not a question."

"Exactly right. It's not a question, just a fact. And if I'm not head of this studio someday, I'll be head of some other studio. And I'm going to do it without fucking somebody to get that job. I'm going to get it because I earned it, doing every shitty job that comes along that teaches me some new skill, some new piece of how a studio operates, and learning which people know their craft and which ones are phonies and incompetents, who is reliable and who is a flake."

"Fair enough," Lauren said. "So tell me, what did you think of _Lez Girls_. As a movie, as a project you worked on."

Adele turned her head and thought for a moment. "Self-indulgent script, but it had potential, it had good bones. Straight ingénue from the Midwest comes to Hollywood, discovers she's lez, finds a home in this highly improbably group of beautiful, glamorous, Rodeo Drive clothes horses, proceeds to destroy herself and those around her with all kinds of excess. A classic Hollywood morality tale, if you think about it. _Scarface_ with dykes, and Jenny is Al Pachino."

"They wanted to change the ending, have her go straight and go back to her boyfriend. That pissed off a lot of people. You go along with it?"

"I'm not sure what you're asking. Did I go along with it? Yes, I went along with it, because that's what the suits wanted. Was it the right decision? No, it was a totally craven, crass, cowardly decision. But that's the business we're in. Craven, crass, cowardly usually wins in Hollywood. Actually, it seems to win most places, if you ask me. That's one reason I want to run a big studio someday. Underneath my cold, heartless, scheming bitch exterior, I have this teensy, tiny little spark of idealism. I want to kick craven crass cowardly's ass. You can't do that from any place but at the top."

"If you have any soul left when you get there," Lauren said.

"Oh, absolutely, you're correct. Yes, it's a race. How many pieces of your soul do you sell to get there, and how many will you have left at the end, if any. Sure, I'm aware of that."

"What did you think of the production itself?"

"The production? Hah! Clusterfuck. But hey, all movies are clusterfucks, they're controlled chaos. Again, ask Carmen. The good ones manage somehow to come together at the end, in the cutting room. Some are shit, irredeemable, but you don't know it at the time. And there's a few that are just so good, so golden, that no amount of cluster-fucking can ruin them. Somebody once said that in Hollywood, nobody knows anything."

"William Goldman," Carmen said quietly. "He wrote _The Princess Bride_ and _Butch Cassidy_."

"There ya go," Adele said. "Nobody knows anything. Except maybe Carmen"

* * *

"That was pretty gutsy, asking how she kept her job during the purge," Carmen told Lauren. They were sitting in the studio commissary eating lunch and killing time before their appointment with Aaron at 2 p.m. "You were provoking her."

"Yes," Lauren said. "I wanted to see how she gets angry, if she has a temper. If she blows up."

"Well, you made her angry, but she hardly reacted at all."

"No. And I don't think she killed Jenny. Shane, you've been awfully quiet. Everything okay? What's on your mind?" Lauren asked. She took a bite of her taco. Like the first day Shane had met Carmen, it was Mexican Menu day in the commissary.

"I'm okay," Shane said.

Lauren glanced at Carmen, who shrugged. Lauren was learning how talking to Shane was sometimes harder than pulling teeth. "So, Adele. What's your intuition say?"

"She didn't do it."

"But…?"

"I'd like to send her to the electric chair anyway."

"California doesn't use the electric chair anymore," Lauren said.

"Not my problem," Shane said, making them laugh. "I say, strap her in and turn on the juice."

"Boy, you really don't like her," Carmen said. "I don't think I've ever heard you say something like that about somebody."

Lauren looked at Carmen for a moment, then turned to Shane. "Shane, let me ask you a pretty hard question. Was Jenny really that out-of-control while making that movie?"

Shane pushed her refried beans around on her plate. They could see her working desperately to formulate some kind of answer.

Carmen took a sip of her iced tea, set it down, and said, "If I may, I think I can translate what Shane is not saying. I can read her body language. She's trying hard not to say that yes, Jenny was out of control. She's trying hard not to say that Jenny was in full turbo diva mode. She had become corrupted by money and power and ego. And Shane is feeling guilty, not because she had anything to do with Jenny being that way, but because she was utterly powerless to stop it. Or even slow it down. Or even say anything out loud to Jenny. How am I doing?"

Shane wouldn't look up from her plate.

"Shane says that she now realizes she totally fucked up her relationship with Molly, but that there was a chance to save it, if Jenny hadn't screwed it up by hiding the letter. Shane says she's still furious with Jenny, but because Jenny died only an hour or so after Shane found the letter she never had a chance to process all that anger. So it has been sitting inside her all this time, and it had no place to go. And then when Jenny was murdered, Shane naturally felt awful. She had somehow been – and here Shane is still searching for the right word, but I think 'manipulated' comes about as close as we can get – Shane says she had somehow been manipulated into become Jenny's lover, and she still doesn't know how that happened, or even why. She has no idea why she was so weak, and let Jenny push her around and – not to be too harsh about it – let Jenny walk all over her. Shane is saying that all her life she's the one who called the shots about her love life and sex life, for good or ill, and that she'd never before been played. But she realizes she was. She's angry about that, too. But then Jenny was murdered, and of course she's been grieving over that, as well all were and are. But Shane says she's been carrying that extra burden none of the rest had, that she was furious with Jenny but has had to bury that anger so deep down."

"Shane says she feels guilty as hell because part of her is glad Jenny is dead. Not because she hated Jenny, because she didn't. But because she was betrayed. And the person who betrayed her and manipulated her and made her feel like shit, and who potentially ruined her relationship with Molly is dead. And Shane is saying that her own pain and confusion over those terrible events is over, and she has her life back, and her own personhood back – but at a terrible, terrible cost. Shane says she's sorry Jenny was murdered … but that there's one small, tiny part that's glad, and she feels ashamed she feels this way, and hates like fucking hell to have to talk about it, or have people ask her about it. For a few minutes on March 8 Shane wanted Jenny to die, and then, sure enough, Jenny did. And it's tearing Shane apart. Magical thinking. She wanted Jenny to die, and then she did. So she's thinking it's her fault. That she caused Jenny to be murdered, because she was so angry at her at that moment. And of course, Shane being Shane, she turns all that anger inward, away from Jenny and onto herself. And now she realizes Alice is in jail for a crime she didn't commit, and she knows this to be true because she's the one who murdered Jenny, but just in her mind, as wish fulfillment, and not a true, physical fact. She's guilty of thought-murder. Wish-murder. That's what Shane is saying."

They watched tears streaming down Shane's face. She put her hands over her face and sobs wracked her body. Lauren stood up, pulled Shane to her feet, and held her while she cried and cried. The commissary was emptying out as people went back to work. A few people looked over and then quickly looked away.


	12. Follow Some of the Money

Although Carmen hadn't done production assistant work at Aaron Kornbluth's studio in nearly five years, she still knew the studio's ins, outs, alleyways, streets and buildings better than Shane did; studios don't change much. She led them from the commissary, down a street behind a sound stage filled with bandaged, wounded Nazi prisoners-of-war and a few dozen U.S. Army soldiers "guarding" them with unloaded, harmless rifles while they sunned, drank smoothies and waited for the next shot.

"Hey, Carmen," an S.S. stormtrooper with his arm in a sling greeted her, waving his "injured" and "bloody" hand.

"Eddie! Hey, how's it going? How's your mom?" Carmen turned and walked backward so she could continue talking.

"She's good. We lost Dad last year."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Give her a hug for me," she said.

"Will do."

"Better get that arm looked at," she called. He laughed and attempted a lame Nazi salute with it.

They turned a corner, crossed the street and entered the main administrative offices. Aaron's office suite was on the top floor, the fourth. It was large and well-appointed, but certainly not in the class of a Louis B. Mayer or a Jack Warner.

"This is nice," Lauren said, "but not what I expected."

"How so?" Carmen asked, after they had introduced themselves to the receptionist and were asked to seat themselves in the reception area, since Aaron hadn't yet returned from lunch and they were 15 minutes early anyway.

"Not … extravagant. No Greek statues, Roman columns, tons of wealth showing everywhere. Gold-plated doorknobs. No Mona Lisa on the wall."

"Aaron could certainly afford most of that if he wanted," Carmen said, "but he's not that kind of movie exec. I'm sure he's got all the creature comforts he wants, but he's more modest than a lot of the people in this town, at least when it comes to flaunting it."

Just then Aaron came striding into the suite, trailed by another man. They wore sports coats but no neckties. "Hey, Shane, Carmen, good to see you again. You must be Detective Hancock. I'm Aaron Kornbluth, come on, everybody, let's go to my office. Deb, hold my calls. Oh, I'm sorry, folks, this is Howard Nichols, my CFO." Aaron went into an inner office as Nichols turned to greet everyone.

"Hi, Howard Nichols," he said, shaking hands with Lauren. "Shane, I don't think we've met. I'm Howard Nichols. Carmen! We did meet, but you almost certainly don't remember, you were maybe 13 or 14, your Uncle Mike brought you onto the lot. I think we were shooting _House of Horrors_ , and he was the lighting guy. Since it was dark and spooky, he didn't have a lot to do."

Carmen laughed. "I remember it like yesterday," she said, flashing her best smile. "I apologize if I don't remember you, but that was the day Uncle Mike introduced me to Trevor Wilson and Bonnie Lane, and I had stars in my eyes all day long."

"Did you get their autographs?" Nichols asked.

"Oh, god, yes," Carmen laughed. "And you know what? I still have them."

"I believe it. Come on, we better get in there before Aaron gets arrested."

They went into Aaron's office, where Carmen joined Lauren and Shane on a large couch while Aaron sat opposite them in a wing chair and Howard took a seat at the side of the room.

Shane leaned over to Carmen and whispered quietly, "What's a CFO?"

"Chief financial officer," Carmen whispered back, her lips hardly moving. "Like a treasurer. The money guy who does the books. Or supervises the guys who do the books."

"You all had lunch? You need coffee or water or anything?" Aaron asked.

"We're fine, thanks," Lauren said, and Carmen and Shane raised their hands in a "No, thanks" gesture.

"Okay, then," Aaron said. "I took the liberty of inviting Howard, here, because he's my accounting officer, and I know from your interview with Adele this morning you were interested in the money angle."

"Thanks," Lauren said. "Yes, we are." If she was pissed about Adele running to tell Aaron everything they'd asked and she'd answered, Lauren never showed it. She had expected as much. "Adele wasn't exactly sure, but she thought the studio lost about four or four and a half million on _Lez Girls_ , is that about right?" She deliberately pronounced _Lez_ with the Z on it, the first half of "lesbian."

"It crept up to pretty close to five," Howard said without waiting for Aaron. "The increase is mostly relatively minor costs for winding down production. Nothing unusual. And it would have been higher if we'd actually finished the movie and put it out there. We had nearly zero post-production costs, no editing, no sound, no music. No promotion and distribution."

"Is there a ballpark estimate?" Lauren asked.

Howard glanced at Aaron who waved it back to Howard.

"Ballpark? Oh, seven, eight million, depending on how much promotion and advertising we would have given it."

"How much would the studio have made on it? Really wild-ass ballpark."

"Well, you know how that goes, it's really impossible to even guess. Some movies tank, and lose vast amounts of money. Then comes along some low-budget indie that grosses 300 mil. It's inexplicable."

"But you must have had some expectations for _Lez Girls_ , right? What's the term you use? You 'green-lighted' it, right?"

Aron sighed and took for himself a moment. "If I'm wearing my publicity hat, my quote-for-the-press hat, then yes, we had high hopes, as we always do, as every studio always does. Now, taking those hats off and pouring myself a strong drink, not for attribution… well, no. I think Shane and maybe Carmen already heard the rumor that we got cold feet about the subject matter, lesbianism, and that we were madly trying to re-focus it as best we could."

"You chickened out," Carmen said flatly. There was no attitude in her voice, but it was clear she wasn't going to tolerate bullshit.

Aaron sighed again. "Yeah, we did, but not for the reasons you think, and you're not gonna like the answer. We're off the record and not for attribution … but, no, not our finest moment. And I'm the big cheese here, I'm the head of the studio, and I take responsibility for the decision to water it down. Look, here's what happened. The early rushes we looked at, the first week or two of shooting, the rushes looked pretty good. The casting seemed pretty good, the acting was okay, the script raised some interesting questions, there were some likeable characters people could identify with." He turned to Howard. "When did we first start changing our minds, Howard? Third week? Fourth?"

Howard shrugged. "Yes, in there. But yes, definitely by the end of the fourth week, for certain."

"It was going south," Aaron said. "It happens. Some productions just collapse of their own weight, the actors hate each other, they hate the director, the director hates them, whatever. The script falls apart. There's no chemistry, or the chemistry goes to hell, same thing, you see that a lot. One of the key actors turns out to be having a bad week or a bad month, is getting a divorce or has a drinking problem or too much blow. Or, hell, maybe they just can't act. They stink. Shit, there's a thousand reasons and a thousand ways. "

"So what was it with _Lez Girls_?" Lauren persisted.

Aaron looked away and wouldn't make eye contact.

"Come on," Lauren said quietly. "We're all adults here. Whatever you say, it won't leave this room."

"I feel bad saying it, with Shane in the room."

"You want me to leave? I'll wait outside," Shane said.

"Stay where you are," Lauren said quietly.

"I'll say it," Shane said. "I know what was wrong with _Lez Girls_. I know what Aaron doesn't want to say."

"Okay," Lauren said.

"It was the director," Shane said. "She didn't know what she was doing. She got in deeper and deeper and started floundering. She went into diva mode. She was fucking her star actress, the power and money went to her head. She was drunk on power, and drunk on pussy. She became a lunatic. A lunatic who was incompetent, who didn't know what she was doing. The demons were running the production."

There was silence. Finally Aaron said quietly, "I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

"Thank you," Shane said. "I appreciate it. But I know she was heading off the rails. Maybe I knew it at the time, subconsciously, I don't know. My subconscious and I don't talk all that much."

"Yes," Aaron said. "What was happening off-screen, behind the scenes, all the crazy stuff. Jenny fucking Niki, who we were still being told was straight. Christ, if we could have put half the offstage drama onto the screen we might have had a decent movie. Anyway, we're looking at the dailies and it's a mess. No other word for it. Scenes that don't make sense. Some pretty awful dialogue. Jenny's got on her European _auteur_ panties, thinks she's Jenny Luc Goddard or some fucking thing, there's these long moody shots that seem to be trying to show anguish on Niki's face, but if you know Niki you can imagine what existential angst looks like on the face of a Valley Girl."

"So then what happened?" Lauren prompted.

"I'd been getting quiet reports from Adele, so we knew what was going on, the rushes only confirmed what she was telling us.”

“The movie sucked.”

“Right,” Aaron said.

“So what happened next?”

“A miracle,” Aaron said. “The Subaru Weekend happened. Then on Monday morning Adele comes in with a sex tape, and in the space of a day everything turned around. Jenny’s out, Adele’s in. Now, yes, I know, Adele didn’t know a lot about directing a movie herself, but the way we figured, she couldn’t possibly be worse than Jenny. If Adele fucks up, great, we blame her and Jenny both, and we write it off. Happens more often than you think. If she turns it around, we’re golden and Adele’s a hero. Basically, win-win.”

“So did Adele save it?”

“Hard to say. The new rushes weren’t too bad, but some of my people started to get nervous. They wanted the ending changed. Happy ending when the girl decides to go back to her boyfriend. No more lesbian angst.” He glanced at Shane and Carmen. “Sorry.”

“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown,” Carmen said.

Aaron shrugged and turned back to Lauren. “Anything else?”

“The negatives get stolen. How’d you hear about it?”

“The film editors came in to work the next morning, and could find them. Nobody really panicked at first, they just started calling around, see if the lab still had them. Took a while to figure out they were gone, and finally somebody calls me. Then we’re in a full-blown panic.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

Aaron smiled broadly. “You’re kidding right?”

“Did you suspect blackmail or extortion? Before you got the note, I mean.”

“Oh, sure, right away. At first I thought it was Tina, and we yelled at each other, but she was right, and I saw she had nothing to gain. We all started thinking it was Jenny, the whole revenge slash fuck you thing. So why didn’t we call the police? No offense, but the LASD would have leaked it in, oh, I don’t know. Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Film at 11. Mediocre lesbian melodrama suddenly gets more publicity than the Super Bowl. Gay rights people going berserk, marchers at the studio gates. The entire cast being interviewed non-stop. Fifteen, twenty totally bogus ransom demands coming in, asking ten, twenty million to get the negatives back. I mean, seriously, jeez. So yeah, we clamped down on it. Carmen, you’re savvy about this business. Am I wrong? Wouldn’t there have been a media storm like this town hasn’t seen since the Manson murders or O.J. Simpson?”

“No, you’re right,” Carmen said. “The phrase ‘media circus” would be a major understatement.”

“Did you ever suspect Niki Stevens?” Lauren asked.

“No, truth to tell, we didn’t. I was surprised when I found out.”

“Any reason you didn’t you suspect her?”

Aaron shrugged. “Frankly, I never thought she had the brain power. I know now I was wrong about that. Have you interviewed her? Do know what her motive was?”

“She’s on my list to re-interview,” Lauren said. “We know she was pissed at Jenny, so that may have been the motive, but it’s just a guess at this point. Let me ask you this. What did you think about the ransom demand you got?”

Aaron glanced at Howard, and both men grinned. “Well, to tell you the truth, we had just about decided to tell the ransom person, whoever it was -- and we didn’t know, at the time – to just go fuck themselves. Adele’s rushes looked better than Jenny’s, and we made the decision to change the ending, which as you know got us a lot of internal flack, and looked like it would get even more if we released it and then got a shitstorm of even more criticism when the internal flack got out—“

“Which it certainly would,” Howard said quietly from his corner.

“—Which it certainly would,” Aaron confirmed. “We hadn’t fully made a decision, but I think we were about 90 percent of the way to saying thanks but no thanks, just keep the negatives and let us know how it works out for you, but you can’t do shit with them if we don’t buy them back. Which, of course, they couldn’t. Howard, you agree.”

“Oh, yes, no question. I guess there were, what Aaron? Five or six of us discussing it, one or two PR people, my insurance guy, our top production guy. We were all pretty much decided against paying. We could get most of our money back through insurance loss and write-off, versus spending an additional an unnecessary half million or million or whatever the ransom was finally settled on. So we spend that half mil, and get our negatives back, and we’re still looking at a couple more mil to edit, promote and distribute the thing. And then we still have the impending shitstorm about the ending.”

“The other thing is,” Aaron said, “even if the negatives hadn’t been stolen, we might very well have just terminated _Lez Girls_ anyway. Anyway, that’s my hindsight, for what it’s worth.”

“Do I hear you saying Niki Stevens did you a favor by stealing the negatives? Is that why you didn’t want to press charges?”

“Well, doing us a favor is going too far. But yes, sure, in hindsight, she probably did do us a favor. But not pressing charges, that was entirely about avoiding all the bad publicity. And of course Niki Stevens will absolutely never ever ever ever, repeat ever a few more times, ever work at this studio ever again, and almost certainly not at two or three other major studios, because I’ve had a very quiet word around town, here and there. I don’t know that her career is totally dead in Hollywood, but it might as well be. Maybe she can get a home shopping gig selling kitchen mops, or porn, or some spaghetti westerns in Europe.”

“Does she know that?”

“Hell if I know. We never said anything to her, so it’s a question of is she smart enough to figure it out she’s blackballed in most of Hollywood. Well, correction, whether she’s smart enough or not may be irrelevant, because I’d guess her management people would know, and they’d probably bail on her. I sure as hell would. Anyway, rumor is she’s in rehab yet again, for what, the third or fourth time? Can’t imagine what she’s worried about.”

“It’s a mystery,” Howard said.

Carmen turned to Shane. “ _Shakespeare in Love_ ,” Carmen said.


	13. Hit-and-Run

On Monday Shane was twenty minutes late for their 9 a.m. meeting in the conference room.

"She just texted me, she's on her way," Lauren told Carmen as she came in and sat down.

"She must have had a romantic, candlelit evening," Carmen said, taking the lid off her paper cup of coffee and offering Lauren a donut from the bag she'd brought.

"Thanks," Lauren said. "Aren't we snarky this morning? So how was your weekend? I'm guessing not romantic and candlelit?"

"Hot and sweaty and wet," Carmen said, "although not in the good way. I went for a run on the beach Saturday, did some gardening in my mom's backyard and got a blister on my hand, cleaned out her attic, helped with the cooking. Washed my car. Babysat for a couple hours for my sister and her husband. Watched _Madame Secretary_ and went to bed."

"No sex, huh? Too bad."

"I never said no sex," Carmen said, sipping her coffee.

"Oh? Who was she?"

"I never said it was with anybody," Carmen said.

Lauren threw back her head and laughed. "Okay, I asked for that."

"How about you?"

"Oh, my weekend was way more interesting, sensual and erotic than yours. Did the laundry. Food-shopped. Cleaned the apartment. Took some old clothes to Salvation Army. Went to the firing range, put a box of ammo into some paper targets. Went to the hardware store and got a replacement float valve for the toilet, which was running, and replaced the bad one. Started my period."

"We hottie young lezzies lead such wild, orgy-filled, sex-crazed, one-orgasm-after-another lives," Carmen said.

"I know," Lauren said. "Did I mention my strap-on's in the shop? I took it in for its annual 5,000-mile checkup and oil change."

"I've always said proper lube is important," Carmen said. "When are you picking it up?"

"I don't know," Lauren said. "They're putting it up on the rack. They want to check the ball joints."

Carmen nodded thoughtfully. "Ball joints. That's good. Wish I'd thought of that." They fell into a comfortable, donut-cushioned silence, chewing and checking their cell phones.

"What are we doing today?" Carmen finally asked.

"We start tracking down your old gang, start setting up interviews. Where is everybody, whose whereabouts do we know, who do we need to search for."

"Let's see," Carmen said, going to her cell phone contacts. "We know Bette and Tina, I know Helena, I don't know if Shane does or not, but I do. She’s on some island somewhere in the Greek archipelago, and basically out-of-touch for a few more weeks. Alice we know, don't think she's going anywhere. I have Kit's address and phone, she's still here in town and running _The Planet_. Uh, who else? Niki, no idea, Max, no idea."

"Dylan."

"Nope. I never met her."

"Kelly?"

"No. Never met her, either."

"Unless Shane knows, we'll have to ask Bette and Tina about Dylan."

"I'd bet serious money they won't know."

"Most likely not, but they are still our best shot at last known address, who they knew, where they lived, etc. They were both fairly public women. Google will find them for us."

"And Niki," Carmen said. "We can get any tabloid to find out what rehab she's in this week."

"You really don't like her, do you," Lauren said.

"Well, in fairness, I never met her, but I heard all about her from Jenny, Alice and Tina, and I know how she fucked up everything with Jenny and Shane. And anyway, she's a terrible actress, not to mention a high-maintenance drama queen who can't survive without a posse. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

"I'm glad we got that ambiguity cleared up. Do you want to call Tina or Bette now, while we're waiting?"

"Um. No, I don't think so. Shane will want to be here to say hello. Mind if we wait? What else can we do?"

"Give me what you've got for contact info on Tina, Bette, Kit and Helena, just so I'll have it, then we can do some Google searches to find Dylan, Kelly, Max and Niki. You take two and I'll take two. Who do you want?"

"Dylan and Niki are in the film industry, and I know a lot of people in it, so I'll take them. You okay with Max and Kelly?"

"Sure."

Carmen gave Lauren what she had and they opened their laptops and started Googling.

After a minute, Lauren murmured, "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"Max. Looks like he's dead."

"What? How? When?"

"Looks like fourteen, fifteen months ago. I assume it's the same Max. It's a police report from the online version of a newspaper in Bakersfield. Tell me if this is your guy. Here's what it says: Quote. The Kern County Sheriff's Office and the California Highway Patrol are asking for anyone with information concerning the hit-and-run death of Bakersfield resident Max E. Sweeney, 37, to call Detective Harry Collins at – blah blah. Sweeney's body was discovered by a passing long-haul truck driver early Friday morning off the southbound shoulder of the Golden State Highway parenthesis State Route 99 near Meadows Field Airport north of Bakersfield.

"Paragraph. The Sheriff's Office identified Sweeney as a computer programmer with an address at a Bakersfield boarding house. Melvin K. Hildebrand, owner of Fast Fix Golden State Computers, told investigators that his computer-repair company had only recently hired Sweeney as a repair technician, and didn't know much about him. He said Sweeney came to work on time, did his job and went home."

"Paragraph. The coroner's division of the Kern County Sheriff's Department said Sweeney had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit for driving, and also had a small amount of a controlled substance in his bloodstream."

"Paragraph. Detective Collins said they have not yet found Sweeney's car, which is registered with the California DMV as a 2006 Subaru Outback, license plate number blah blah. He said his office speculates that Sweeney's car may have broken down somewhere and that Sweeney was walking along the shoulder toward Bakersfield sometime after midnight Thursday night when he was struck by a southbound vehicle that didn't stop or report the incident. Collins said he interviewed the long-haul trucker who telephoned in the report of the body. Collins said the trucker was able to see the body because of his height above the roadbed and because it was a few minutes after sunrise when there was enough daylight to see well enough to identify it as a body. He said the truck driver is not a suspect and that forensic and other evidence showed the truck driver was several hundred miles north at the approximate time the hit-and-run occurred."

They both took sips of coffee and thought it over. "What do you think?" Carmen asked.

"Nothing yet. But it's clear I need to make a bunch of phone calls to Bakersfield."

"Think it's just a coincidence?"

"Cops hate coincidences. But sometimes they happen. Let me see if I can find an obit."

"Okay. Seems pretty certain nobody in our group knew about it. We'd have passed it around soon as we heard about it." Lauren nodded. Carmen went back to searching for Niki.

"Got something," Lauren said. "The Bakersfield _Californian_ has an online version with an obituary section, and the search engine has a Max Sweeney, dated, let's see, two weeks after the hit-and-run. Quote. A brief memorial service was held Sunday afternoon at the Bakersfield Crematoria for Max E. Sweeny, 37, of Bakersfield, who was killed two weeks ago in a late-night hit-and-run on Golden State Highway."

"Paragraph. Sweeney was employ—" Lauren stopped as Shane walked into the conference room and sat down with her cup of coffee.

"Hey, good morning, guys, sorry I'm –" She saw their faces. "What?"

"It's Max," Lauren said.

"What about Max?"

"He's dead. More than a year ago, in a hit-and-run outside of Bakersfield."

"Fuck," Shane said quietly. She took the top off her coffee and sipped, blowing on it. "Fuck. How do you know?"

"We started searching for the old gang to contact them for interviews. We found it in a Google search. I was just reading the obit to Carmen."

"Can you start over?"

"Sure. Quote. A brief memorial service was held Sunday afternoon at the Bakersfield Crematoria for Max E. Sweeny, 37, of Bakersfield, who was killed two weeks ago in a late-night hit-and-run on Golden State Highway."

"Paragraph. Sweeney was employed by Fast Fix Golden State Computers on Stockdale Highway. He was the parent of a two-year-old child, deceased, according to his former partner, Thomas J. Mater of Hollywood, the child's co-parent. Mater said Sweeney was born and raised in a small town near Skokie, Illinois, and moved to Los Angeles in 2006. Mater said Sweeney had no next-of-kin except for a sister named Maggie, from who he was estranged. Mater said he had had no contact with Sweeney for a year, but understood that Sweeney quote had issues unquote and was quote struggling unquote."

"Fuck," Shane said.

"Quote. The Kern County Sheriff's Department said it was continuing its investigation of the hit-and-run, which it termed a quote suspicious vehicular homicide unquote. The Sheriff's Office said Sweeney's body was discovered by a truck driver shortly after sun-up by the side of the road near Meadows Field Airport. The Sheriff's Department believes Sweeney was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver several hours earlier. Preliminary tests showed Sweeney had an elevated blood alcohol level as well as a controlled substance in his blood. The Sheriff's Department and coroner unit are awaiting the outcome of further lab and field tests."

There was silence. "That's it?" Shane asked.

"That's it, plus the news article we found online."

"What's that say?"

"Mostly the same. Max was apparently walking southbound on the shoulder of Route 99 north of town sometime after midnight on a Thursday night slash Friday morning, was hit by a vehicle that didn't stop. His body laid by the side of the road until a trucker saw it when the sun came up. Max had apparently been living in a boarding house in Bakersfield and working at some kind of computer repair shop. That's it."

Shane looked from Carmen to Lauren. "So what do you think?"

Lauren looked at Carmen for a second before answering. "I don't know what I think or what Carmen thinks, but I have a fair idea of what the Bakersfield cops think."

"What's that?"

"For whatever reason, Max was walking home toward Bakersfield, or maybe even hitchhiking with his thumb out. He'd obviously been drinking and doing some kind of drugs. Once you know that the rest of it just writes itself. He staggered out into the roadway and got hit, mostly his fault, not the driver. That happens way more than you'd think, statistically. Second possibility he was on the shoulder walking forward or walking backward with his thumb out, either way he got hit. In either case, the driver panics and keeps going. Third possibility. Max is quote struggling unquote according to whatshisname, the partner—"

"Yeah. Tom. I knew Tom."

"According to Tom, struggling, whatever that could mean. Physically, mentally, depression, job, love life, the entire ball of wax. Drunk, stoned, decides to put an end to his suffering, steps out in front of a car or truck. Truck is better. That happens a lot, too, instead of suicide by cop it's suicide by Greyhound, suicide by 18-wheeler, whoever the next poor schmuck driving down the highway hauling avocados to San Diego happens to be. I'd rule out buses and trucks, though, because the drivers are professionals and if they hit somebody they tend to stop and report it. They all know about suicides who step out in front, and they know things like eyewitnesses, lack of skid marks, alcohol tests and so on support them. They're doing sixty, seventy miles an hour, they have no reaction time, no way to jam on the brakes. They also know that if they don't stop, sooner or later paint chips and that kind of stuff can identify their vehicles, so the good drivers know there's no percentage in running away. They know it's not their fault and no point in running. Plus, if it’s a bus, they’ve probably got passengers, who are witnesses. Buses always stop and report."

"So who runs?" Carmen asked. "Kids?"

"Sure, kids, but not only kids. It's what, one, two, three o'clock in the morning. Anybody who's been drinking and the very last thing they want is take a breathalyzer test. You kill somebody even if it's not your fault, but you pull even a .03 or .04 you're in the shit. Or your license or your insurance is expired. Or you're an undocumented immigrant picking grapes. You're in daddy's car and you know he's gonna freak that you hit somebody with it, and you just know daddy's not gonna believe it wasn't your fault, because that's how daddy is. You're seventy-five years old and your children want you to hand over your keys because your night vision is failing. You've got 12 parking tickets. You've got twenty dime bags of weed in the trunk. You're on the way home with your 15-year-old girlfriend who is smoking your johnson when this guy jumps out in front of you. You are straight, sober John Q. Citizen but you were nodding off and then BAM! You don't even know what you hit, but you're wide awake now and too shit-scared to find out, so you keep going, hoping it was a junkyard dog or a deer. You're cheating on your wife and your girlfriend's in the car with you. You're a somewhat famous politician or sports star or celebrity, and you don't need the bad publicity."

"So … pretty much anybody," Shane said.

"Pretty much. And I haven't mentioned thrill killers. Every now and then there's some asshole out there who likes to scare the shit out of hitchhikers just for the hell of it. And sometimes they get too close and miss, which is to say, they hit them. Once in a while it's a straight-shot homicide, usually when there's some other assholes in the car egging the driver on."

"Nice," Shane said. "Fuck. Can I go home now?"

"You just got here," Lauren said.

"I know. I fucking hate Monday mornings."

"You hate all mornings," Carmen said.

Shane ignored her, because it was true. "What do you want me to do?"

"We were waiting for you to arrive before we called Bette and Tina in New York," Lauren said. "We figured you'd want to be here for that. Then we'll need to track down Niki, Helena, Dylan and Kelly, and you may have some idea where they are. I was gonna take two and Carmen take two, but now I've got to make a bunch of calls to Bakersfield, so how about you take Helena and Kelly?"

"Yeah, sure. I've got old phone numbers and e-mails but I don't know if they're still good. But I can try them. You said we're calling Bette and Tina?"

"Yes, hang on a sec," Carmen said, punching buttons on her cell phone. "I'm putting it on speakerphone."

They heard it ring three times before Tina picked up. "Hey, Carmen," Tina's voice came out. "You home? What's up? How's your sex life? I need a vicarious thrill."

"Before we go too far, you're on speakerphone, so the phone sex may have to wait. And I'm not home, I'm actually in LA. Shane's here, too—"

"Shane!" Tina said, "hey, babe!"

"Hey, Tina," Shane leaned forward.

"Uh, didn't quite expect both of you… um… you know…"

"Yeah, it's a very long story," Carmen said, "and we've got a lot of news to tell you and Bette, starting off with some bad news. Have you got a minute to talk?"

"Just what I needed on a Monday, bad news. Actually, I have about three minutes before I have a lunch meeting. Go ahead, I'm sitting down."

"It's Max," Carmen said. "We think he's dead."

"What? What happened?"

"Looks like a hit-and-run accident, and it was, like, more than a year ago. Apparently he moved to Bakersfield, and one night after midnight he was walking along some interstate and got clipped. They didn't find the body until daylight."

They heard Tina heave a sigh. "Well, shit. That's too bad. Max was never my favorite person, and not Bette's, either. Or yours. Or Shane's. But, you know, sad to hear it. But how are you guys, everybody else okay? Shane, I hear you're making a million bucks trimming celebrity twat, is that true?"

Shane laughed. "Yes, that's one nasty, salacious rumor I cannot deny. Not a million bucks, but an obscene amount. Hey, how's my little ballerina?"

"She's great. Oh, Shane, you should see her dance. Oh, Carmen. We go to her rehearsals and her dance classes and Bette and I have tears in our eyes. She's so light, so graceful, so ethereal. I mean, we're talking the next Misty Copeland. Carmen, I sent you a couple of videos I made with my phone."

Shane frowned. Carmen got videos and she didn't?

"I watch them over and over," Carmen said, not looking at Shane, but she picked up that Lauren was watching Shane's face. "Hey, look, I know you gotta run, but there's one more thing. We need to set up a time when we can Skype with you and Bette, as soon as possible, like maybe after work today, if we can. And I need to tell you there's a third person in the room with us right now. Detective Lauren Hancock of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, meet our friend Tina."

"Hello, Tina," Lauren said. "Good to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about you, all of it good."

"Hi, Laura, you said?"

"Lauren. Lauren Hancock."

"Oh, sorry. Lauren. Hi! Did you arrest Shane and Carmen? Do they need bail? Are they handcuffed? Please tell me they are handcuffed, it's always been one of my fantasies."

They laughed. "No," Lauren said. "They're not under arrest. Not yet, anyway. I'll be happy to handcuff them, though, if it floats your boat. You want that before or after the strip search?"

"Oh, you know how to turn a girl on. Can I get a rain check on that?" Tina said. "So what's going on?"

"Tina," Carmen said, "Shane and I have teamed up with Detective Hancock to re-open the investigation into Jenny's murder. We're convinced Alice is innocent and we want to get her out of prison."

"Well, shit, of course Alice is innocent, everybody knows – fuck, somebody's waving at me. I gotta go. I'll call Bette and get back to you soon as I can. I think we can Skype tonight."

"Great," Carmen said. "Go! Eat, mangia mangia, we'll talk later. Love you, bye!"

"You, too. Bye, Shane, bye, Laura!" Then she hung up.

"Your friend sounds like a real trip," Lauren said. "I'm really anxious to call Bakersfield now. Are you guys set on your research?"

"Yes," Carmen said. Shane nodded, yawned and opened her laptop.

Lauren looked up the number for the Kern County Sheriff's Department, dialed the number on her cell, and when it was answered she asked for Detective Collins. She waited to be transferred.

"Detective Collins? This is Detective Lauren Hancock, Los Angeles County Sherriff's Department Missing Persons Unit. I'm glad I caught you in the office on a Monday morning…

Good, thanks. You have a minute to talk? I'm working an old case and just discovered by an Internet search you have a vehicular homicide case from fourteen months ago, a hit-and-run, that I'm interested in… The vic was a Max Sweeny, Bakersfield resident, white male, age 36… yes, that's him… oh, really? … uh huh … uh huh… ."

Shane and Carmen gave up the pretense of doing their own work and listened to Lauren's end of the conversation.

"Uh huh … No shit? That's weird. Uh huh… Yes, I know about that. I can help clear that up, if you want. He was transgender, lived here in LA for four or five years, transitioned or was transitioning. Then had a baby, according to the obit I read … Yes, I know. Wait a minute, there's somebody here can answer that." Lauren turned to Shane and Carmen. "Do you know anything about Max getting top surgery?"

"He was going to get it," Carmen said, "and a bunch of us even held a fundraiser for him to get it. But then things changed. As far as I know, up until the time of Jenny's death, he hadn't had it. Shane, do you know any different?"

"No," Shane said. "We lost touch with Max right after ... you know … Jenny…and up until then he hadn't had it. Did he get it later on?"

"Coroner's report says he did. Hang on. Detective Collins? Max apparently had the top surgery after he left LA, my people here don't know anything about it. Is there any reason to think it was connected? … Okay… No, I understand … Nothing on the BOLO … Okay, I'm going to have to come up there and look at the book, can we set that up? How's your schedule? Okay… right. Yes, that'll work. Thanks ... My boss will call your boss … Thanks. See you then."

Lauren set down her cell phone. "Fuck."

"What?" Carmen asked.

"It wasn't a hit-and-run accident," Lauren said. "Not exactly, anyway. They've got it down as an open case, homicide. They think Max was deliberately run down and killed."

"Fuck," Shane murmured.

"Yeah. And here's the really weird part. They think he was killed by his own car, and they never found it afterward."

"Fuck," Shane said.

Lauren picked up her cell and punched in Marybeth's number. "You got a minute? Something's come up. I've got to go to Bakersfield. We have another murder."


	14. Road Trip

They met Marybeth Duffy in the hallway, coming toward them with a big china mug of coffee in her hand. “Well, well,” she said, “if it isn't the No. 1 Lady Lesbian's Detective Agency. Okay, Hancock, what have you guys got?”

They all entered Marybeth's office and Lauren closed the door. "And a cheery Monday good morning to you, too, captain, my captain. We've got another murder, only we don't know if it's connected to our case or not."

"Who's dead? Everybody sit down."

They took chairs. "Max Sweeny," Lauren said.

"Sweeny, Sweeny. Oh, yes, the tranny. The one nobody liked and he-she didn't like them much, either."

"That's a little harsh," Shane said quietly.

Marybeth ignored her. "Tell me," she said to Lauren.

"We wanted to start re-interviewing everyone who was there that night. We just now discovered that Sweeny is dead, killed in a deliberate hit-and-run on the outskirts of Bakersfield six months or so after the Schecter murder. He was walking along the side of a major interstate, possibly hitchhiking, sometime after midnight, drunk and stoned, according to the autopsy results. Somebody clipped him, they think on purpose. And here's the thing. Sweeny owned a car, an old Subaru beater, and nobody can find it, it's missing. Their forensic people think it may be the car that killed her."

"She was hit by her own car?"

"Looks like it, but at high speed. It didn't roll over her or anything like that. Bakersfield just gave me the headlines, not the details. I want to go read the reports myself, but that's the conclusion they came to."

"Who'd you talk to?"

"Kent County Sheriff's Office, the lead detective on the case named Collins. Sounded like he knew his stuff. Said it was an open, active homicide case. No leads, no suspect, no known motive."

"Why didn't we know about it?"

"I don't know yet, that's one of the things I want to find out. We only had a few minutes to talk. He'd never heard anything about Schecter, so he wants to talk to us about it. And we didn't know anything about his hit-and-run, so we need to talk to him."

"Road trip," Marybeth said. "Bakersfield's what, two hours north, more or less.

"Yep. Hundred, hundred and ten miles. Two hours up, two hours back, and an overnighter."

"Yes," Marybeth said.

"Why overnight? I'm just curious, not nit-picking," Carmen asked.

"I want to walk the scene at midnight or later. See what the traffic is like. Look at it in daylight, too."

"Got it," Carmen said.

"How'd you leave it with what's his name, Collins?"

"He's got stuff to do today but goes off shift at 4, and is willing to meet then, barring an unforeseen call-out. I said my captain would call his captain, just to square everything up. Here's the number." Lauren handed a slip of paper to Marybeth.

"Okay, good. You taking Nancy Drew and Miss Marple with you?"

"You guys coming along?" Lauren turned to Shane and Carmen.

"Wouldn't miss it," Carmen said. “I’m Nancy Drew, right? And Shane’s Miss Marple.”

Shane had no idea who Miss Marple was, but recognized it as one of Marybeth’s mock insults, and ignored it. "Uh, Chase and I have to go to a training session this afternoon, and then he's got me scheduled for a wine-and-cheese thing at one of the Sugar Shacks, 5 to 7 p.m.," Shane said.

"Save me some wine and cheese. Looks like you and me, Carmen," Lauren said.

"Roger that. Copy. Ten-four. What is it you guys say?"

"We call dibs on who drives, who rides shotgun, and don't be a wise-ass," Lauren said, laughing.

"If the comedy's over get your asses out of my office and back to work," Marybeth said.

"I got one other thing, procedural. Shane, Carmen, can you give me a minute?" Lauren held the door open for them. When they had walked down the hall to the conference room Lauren said to Marybeth, "How do you want to handle the paperwork? Up until now we were unofficial and off the books."

"Yes, I can't send you to Bakersfield to look at a homicide without some CYA for both of us. Look, here's what you do. See if Morales is willing to file a missing person's report, looking for Sweeny. Back-date it to Friday and start a file. Then from here on out we're on the record."

"Got it."

"You only found out a little while ago Sweeny's dead, correct?"

"Correct."

"Good. Make sure that's in the timeline. Sweeny missing first on Friday, discovered deceased second on Monday. If we did it the other way around the homicide team would be all over our asses."

"I know. Got it covered."

After Lauren left Marybeth wondered if she should have said something about Lauren spending the night with Carmen in a motel in Bakersfield, but couldn't figure out what she'd have said. Be good? Don't do anything I wouldn't do? Wear clean underwear?

* * *

"What's the plan?" Carmen asked when Lauren entered the conference room.

"Let's work until lunch," Lauren said, "and then we'll grab something to eat and you and I can run home to pack an overnight bag and Shane can go do her thing with Chase. I'll pick you up at your mom's about one or one-thirty and we'll head out to Bakersfield. Sound good?"

Lauren explained Marybeth's request about Carmen opening a missing persons request on Max, backdating it to Friday.

"Sure," Carmen said. "Where do I sign?"

Lauren went to get the paperwork to be filled out. When she came back Shane said, "Can I ask a question? It doesn't matter, but why does Carmen sign it, not me? Or don't I want to know?"

Lauren glanced at Carmen. "Marybeth and I think it would help to put a little distance between the Schecter case and you, on the one hand, and Max being killed in Bakersfield, on the other. Just in case."

"In case what? In case I did it? Ran him over?"

"Shane, no one thinks you did it," Carmen said quietly.

"Shane, at some point we'll need to document your whereabouts for that night, if we can. Carmen hadn't seen Max in a couple of years, had moved to San Francisco, and was probably at sea when Max was killed. It just makes everything easier this way."

"You said, 'if we can.' If we can document my whereabouts. What's that mean?"

"Nothing, I'm sorry I said it that way. All I meant was—"

"I know what you meant. I was probably out fucking somebody whose name I don't even remember and there will be no way to figure out where I was or what I was doing."

"Shane, stop this right now," Carmen said. "Nobody's saying that."

They fell silent, glaring at each other.

"Okay, somebody tell me. What am I missing?" Lauren asked.

"Go ahead, tell her," Shane said.

"No," Carmen said.

There was silence. Lauren said nothing, letting it work.

Finally Shane sighed. "I once threatened Max."

"Okay," Lauren said. "Tell me."

"It was during the fundraiser we had for Max's top surgery. Like we told you, when he was taking the steroids Max was a lunatic sometimes, he flew into rages. Anyway, we were at the party, people all around, and he started manhandling Jenny. He had her by the arm, and they were bitching at each other over something."

“What happened?”

Shane looked away.

“You can say it,” Lauren said.

“He let her go just as I came up to them. Jenny walked away, and I got in Max's face."

"And?"

"I told him if he hurt Jenny I’d be the one who'd cut his tits off.”

Lauren laughed and Carmen grinned.

"It's not funny," Shane said, sulking.

"Did anybody hear you threaten him?"

Shane looked away. "I don't know."

"Shane," Carmen said quietly.

"Carmen and Alice heard. Maybe Tina. But inside of two minutes everybody in the place knew I'd said it. Probably total strangers walking by on the street knew. Shane's gonna cut off Max's tits. We can give all the money back."

"Okay, this has gone on far enough," Carmen said. "Can I step in here now? First off, it was never a serious threat, nobody thought Shane was gonna do anything, it was just a figure of speech. Second, they both got over it and three days later everybody forgot about it. It has no bearing on --"

Carmen's cell phone chimed.

"It's Tina," Carmen said, reading the caller ID. "Hey, Tina, I'm putting you on speakerphone."

"Hey, everybody," Tina said. "Shane and Lauren, right? I got hold of Bette and she flipped when she heard Max was dead. You really have us curious now, and we really wanna Skype you guys and get the low-down. Trouble is tonight after work is terrible, it's ballet lessons night for Miss Anjelica and her battalion of FDAs—"

"FDAs?' Carmen asked.

"Future Divas of America," Tina said. "That's what we call them, and the parents are all DRDs, Divas Raising Divas."

"I'm sure you and Bette aren't divas," Carmen said, laughing.

"Oh, goodness, no, two laid-back, relaxed, easy-going Type B personalities like Bette and me? Perish the thought."

"Well, as it turns out, tonight is out for us, too. Lauren and I have to go to Bakersfield to talk to the police out there about Max, and Shane's got a Sugar Shack event."

"A wine-and-cheeser pussy pleaser," Shane said. "That's what Chase calls them." Everyone laughed.

"Tomorrow may be way better anyway," Carmen said, "since we'll have a lot more information to tell you by then."

"How about we call you tomorrow to set something up for tomorrow afternoon or evening?"

Carmen looked at Shane and Lauren. Shane nodded. "That'll work," Lauren said.

* * *

Lauren altered the plan when Carmen suggested she come over to Mercedes Morales' house for lunch. "Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss a meal at your mom's for anything," she said. She drove to her apartment, picked up her "go" bag, which was already 90 percent packed and ready for any eventuality, and got to Carmen's mom's house by 12:15.

"Detectiveev Hancock!" Mercedes said, giving her a big hug at the door. "I'm so sorry! We ran all out of food yesterday. You and Carmen will just have to go to Taco Bell."

"Yeah, right," Lauren said, laughing. "Come on, Carmen, I guess we'll just have to get something on the road."

"Park your butt down in a dining room chair," Carmen said from the kitchen doorway. "One chimichanga or two? Refried beans?"

Lauren groaned. "One, and half a helping of the beans. I'm driving."

"Good point," Carmen said. "No beans, mom, if we're going to be trapped in a car for a couple of hours."

"Nonsense," Mercedes said, filling Lauren's plate. "Just roll the windows down."

* * *

They were quiet leaving the barrio, and Lauren had on a radio station reporting traffic. Her police radio occasionally squawked a message, too, and when they got to the I-5 she turned both radios off.

Carmen, normally talkative and friendly, stared out the window.

“I think it's my turn to ask,” Lauren said. “Is something on your mind?”

"Uh, no."

"Come on, don't kid a kidder."

“It's nothing. Really,” Carmen said.

"Uh-huh."

“I just had the idea … way back when … you and Shane ... .”

“Oh,” Lauren said. Half a mile later, she said, “There was. Shane and me.”

“It's none of my business,” Carmen said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I don't mind,” Lauren said. “Since we're being honest with each other. And like you say, it's ancient history. It was a week or ten days after Harvey’s funeral. I made a total fool of myself, and was very unprofessional into the bargain.” Then she got quiet.

“Oh, no,” Carmen said. “No, no, no, you can't leave me there. C'mon.”

Lauren laughed. “Yeah, I guess I have to tell it. Well, I was attracted to Shane, you know? She had this … thing. Guess I don’t have to tell you. But of course she was grieving and distraught, and all, but I liked her. I liked how she pulled herself together that night. And I only had known her for an hour, you know, under the worst of all possible circumstances. She had dropped a lot of the punk and andro you said she was in, she didn't look too different than she does now. And I didn't know how old she was. I didn't think about it, just automatically assumed she was twenty-one, I have no idea why. Anyway, I had expected never to see her again after that night, you know? But I couldn't get her out of my head.”

“She does that to you,” Carmen said quietly. She closed her eyes and rested her head back against the headrest. “So what happened?”

“I just couldn't stop thinking about her. Part of it was concern and, you know, sympathy for her loss, and all. There was this poor girl, now all alone. I could tell Harvey was special, this father figure, as you called him, and so it was like this young woman who had no mother and now her father had died. This poor orphan girl thing. So there was all that. And then I was attracted to her, too.”

“Were you out of the closet then?”

“Yeah, pretty much. My family knew, my training officer knew, most of the cops in my precinct knew. It wasn't so much a question of being out as much as it was I was shy and inexperienced. I'd only ever been with a few other girls, and I had no fucking idea how to date or how to socialize with other lesbians, you know? I wasn’t into the scene, or Gay Pride, or anything like that. And when you're a cop you tend to hang out with other cops, whether you're straight or not, because you always want to be one of the guys, one of the group. Cops have this big bonding thing, especially with your partner. And Larry was a good guy, married, and his wife was cool, and she was actually very happy I was gay because it meant I was no threat to bang her husband. That’s always a real problem with male-female cop partnerships, so if one of the partners is gay, then the risk is practically eliminated, you know? Long story short, there I am, age 26, not too far from being a virgin, and I've got this schoolgirl crush on this girl I'd met on the job, which is supposedly a really big no-no, very unprofessional behavior in law enforcement, which is a joke because cops do it all the time. So anyway, one day I'm off duty I drive out to Harvey's house to see if she's okay. Just check up on her, and, you know, talk. Give her a shoulder to cry on, if she needs it. Be there for her.”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, right. Well, that's what I told myself, anyway. Had this big rationale all built up inside my head, sympathetic older sister, somebody to help her grieving, blah blah. So she's not home yet, so I wait around for her to get home--”

“You staked out her house?”

“Well ... yeah.”

Carmen laughed. “Oh, cool. You stalked her.”

“Yeah, I had the hots for her. No doubt about it. And of course I’m rationalizing the shit out of it to myself.”

“I'm not laughing at you, I'm-- okay, I _am_ laughing at you, but I also know what you mean. I've been there, done that, got the T-shirt, souvenir mug, stadium cushion with the team logo. Sorry I interrupted just as it's getting good.”

“So in a little while she comes home and pulls into the driveway, and I screw up my courage and go knock on the door, and it's horrible, I'm tongue-tied, hemming and hawing and practically kicking my toe in the dirt. It was, like, the ninth grade crush from Hell.” They both laughed.

“And of course Shane knows exactly what’s going on, because her intuition is off the charts.”

“Oh, yeah, she knew. And the thing is, she made it easy for me. I ask her if she wants to go get a drink, and she says it's not a good idea because I'm a cop and she's only twenty, and I feel like this complete, total idiot, not to mention child abuser because she’s not even old enough for a fucking beer, but then she says she'd like a cup of coffee and some dinner. And in the car I’m babbling and she stops me and leans over and kisses me, nothing special, just a nice kiss on the lips. And all of a sudden everything's fine and it's like a storm has passed and the sun has come out. She’s got me all calmed down and sane and not crazy any more—“

“She can do that,” Carmen nodded. “She has powers.”

“I bet. So now I'm practically in love with her three minutes after I talk to her, and we go get dinner, and we come back and we go swimming in Harvey’s pool--”

“Oh, Christ,” Carmen laughed. “Shane loves pool fucking. She's probably fucked more times in the water than Shamu. She’s fucked in Tina and Betty's pool, she's fucked in the ocean, she's fucked in mountain streams when we went camping. She’d fuck in a rain barrel if there was room for two. The time she cheated on me she fucked Cherie Jaffe in her pool in Malibu. Maybe it's the chlorine, I think it has this incredible aphrodisiac effect on Shane.”

“Guess so,” Lauren laughed. “So anyway, we fuck in the pool, and then we switch to the hot tub, and we cum again up against the jets, and then we go inside, and make love, and in the morning we do it again in the shower. In one night and the next morning I've practically doubled my entire sexual history, and it was great. Best sex I ever had.”

“So she rocks your world, and it's mind-blowingly terrific, and two days later it's like she can hardly remember your name or who you are,” Carmen said quietly.

“Yeah. But in my case it was two weeks. I was on a swing shift rotation, and didn't really have a chance to call her or ask for a second date right away. So two weeks later I finally get a night off and I call, and I leave a message on her answering machine at Harvey's house, and she never calls back. And I try two weeks later, and same thing. So basically, I never hear from her again and she doesn't return my calls.”

“Because she doesn't do relationships,” Carmen said. “No repeats, very few sleepovers, and you should be flattered, she made an exception in your case, you got a whole night and some morning fucking. It's wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. That's how's she's managed to rack up a thousand sex partners.”

Lauren drove for a while. “So how'd you break through?”

“I didn't take no for an answer. To me it felt like love at first sight, which I know sounds really stupid and juvenile and all, but that's how I felt. Kind of like you, from the sound of it. From the moment I first set eyes on her she took my breath away, and I felt this connection, this ... almost spiritual thing. And I just always held onto that. I knew she was damaged, broken. It was like these stories you hear, about some woman in love with this horndog bad boy, and the more he treats her like shit, the more she's in love with him. It's that whole Bad Boy scenario, only the surprise was it happens with lesbians as well as straight women. Why do we fall in love with Bad Boys? I still have no fucking idea. It’s some kind of pathology. I've read all the magazine articles, but to this day I still don't understand it. I'm practically the poster girl for Bad Boy Survivors, and I still don't have a clue.”

“I'm no help,” Lauren said. “I never understood the Bad Boy thing, either.” They rode for a block. “So, is there anybody in your life now?”

“No, not really. There was this school teacher down in San Diego. I thought for a while maybe something was happening, but now I don't think so.”

“Was it serious?”

“Hell if I know,” Carmen said. “Six months ago, I might have said yes, or at least maybe. We have major schedule conflicts, she's a couple hundred miles away, and she won't come out of the closet.”

“I'm sorry,” Lauren said again.

“Yeah, there's days when I begin to think maybe I'm snake-bit. I get by, because I have a couple of casual fuck buddies. There's this woman I know on one of the cruise ships, and when we sail together sometimes we hook up, but it's just fun and sex and companionship, it's not love, and we're both comfortable with it. And I know this woman in San Francisco, but it's the same thing. Sex and fun but no romance, not until my next Princess Charming comes along.”

“Or until Shane comes back.”

“Shane's not coming back, Lauren, you have my word on that. No fucking way she gets back inside my head or my pants. Not happening. No go. De nada. No way, José.” They rode in silence for a while. “So what about you?” Carmen asked. “You got somebody in your life?”

“No,” Lauren said, half sad and half laughing at herself. “No, my story is pretty much as pathetic as yours. Married to my career. Very few opportunities to meet the right lady. Crazy work schedule. Not very experienced, even now. A couple of affairs, nothing really serious. Starting to get worried about the clock, wondering where the years went, wondering what's left. Wondering where she is, Princess Charming, wondering what the fuck's taking her so long to find me. Wondering ... .” She shut up.

“Wondering what?”

A block went by.

“Wondering … if there's something wrong with me. I’m not … unattractive. I hope that doesn’t sound egotistical, but, you know, I don’t think I need a bag over my head.”

Carmen laughed, and Lauren grinned. “But do I give off some vibe to other women, stay away from this one, she's crazy? Wondering if I'm too picky. Or too lazy to go out to the dyke bars and lezzie meet markets, although I just really hate that scene. Wondering if maybe it’s because I’m a cop, and women don’t want to date cops, even lady cops, and I can’t say they’re too far from wrong about that. It’s miserable being in love with a cop, even well-adjusted, straight ones. Yes, there are cop groupies, but I never met a lezzie cop groupie."

"Life is just so unfair that way," Carmen said,

Lauren laughed. "Yes. So I'm left wondering if I should just throw in the towel and stop looking, just buy myself a weapons-grade Hitachi and a couple quarts of ice cream and say fuck it, I give up.”

“No,” Carmen said.

“No, what?”

“No, don't give up. Don't ever give up.” They rode for a while. “There's something else,” Carmen said.

“What?”

“There's nothing wrong with you. You're fine just the way you are, and to think maybe you aren’t pretty is just plain crazy. But I can attest, first hand, you don't give off psycho vibes. Anybody in her right mind would be more than happy to go out with you. Be your lover. If there's something wrong, it's with the women you've met. And anyway, the lesbian community isn't exactly teeming with stable, well-adjusted, sane, open, available, happy women trying on their Princess Charming outfits. Maybe we’re no worse than any other demographic, but we’re sure not any better, either. There's a lot of crazies out there, drama queens, stone butches, militants, the power doms, the whole gamut. I mean, Jesus, we're talking about Hollywood and Los Angeles, right? The Narcissism Capital of the World. Anyway, what is it women always say about men? All the good ones are already married, and the ones who aren’t married are gay. It’s the same with lesbians. All the good ones are taken, and the ones who aren’t taken are straight.”

Lauren laughed. After a while she said. “Speaking of which, I have this really stupid, pointless crush, but it's never gonna work out.”

“Why not?”

“Like you said, the ones who aren’t taken are straight. It's this LAPD homicide detective I worked with once. We were both on a task force for a little while, and I just fell in love with her. Cute as hell. Straight as a diving board. And naturally, somewhat damaged. A Reformed Bad Boy girl.”

“What's her name?”

“Dani, spelled D-A-N-I.”

“Feel like telling me about her, or is she a sore point?”

Lauren made a ffffft noise. “Well, okay. The first thing you need to know about her is I heard of her long before I ever met her. When you’re coming up and you get assigned to a new cop house, your new partner often tells you what’s what. You know, stuff like who’s a good guy, who’s a dickhead, who’s an ass-kisser, who to trust, who to avoid, that kinda thing. So anyway, I had a partner who was telling me this kind of stuff, and one of the things he said was, if I ever ran across an LAPD cop named Dani Reese be really careful, or better yet, just stay away from her. Run away, he said. She had once been undercover, was sleeping with some low-level informant drug dealer on a case who got her hooked, and then she had to go into rehab, and probably would have been fired except she had major connections upstairs. But, he said, she was bad news and nobody wanted to work with her, so be warned. And by the way, she’s an alcoholic as well as an ex-druggie, she goes to AA and NA, but they say she drinks anyway. Okay, that sounds pretty bad, right? A train wreck waiting to happen. Then next thing we all hear is she gets assigned another fuck-up partner who had actually been in jail for, like, 12 years even though he was innocent, and he sued the city and won a bazillion bucks and got his job back as a homicide detective, which she is, too. So what they did was take the two worst, most fucked-up detective partners in all of LA and teamed them together. Next I hear a year or so later she’s sleeping with her captain, then she gets abducted by some Russian mobster in some kind of long-running scandal involving her father, who was previously the leader of a SWAT team but he was involved in this big, famous bank robbery shoot-out. I mean this is the kind of stuff that was just routine gossip, you know? And it just keeps piling up a piece at a time. I never really gave her much thought, I just assumed she was just some bad-ass rotten-apple-turned-urban-legend fucking her way up the ranks. Then Marybeth and I both transferred over to the sheriff's department from the LAPD, anyway, and with ten thousand cops in the LAPD I’d figured I'd never run into her anyway.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Yep, you know what’s coming. So one day I get assigned to this special city/county task force for a couple weeks, and I go to Parker Center and we’re all in this big conference room, maybe two dozen of us, and I’m one of only three or four women detectives. I’m a little late and most of the chairs are taken but I find one in the back just as the meeting starts. I’m sitting next to this cool, petite brunette, she’s pretty quiet and intense, doesn’t say much. After a while it comes time to partner up and get our specific assignments, and we both kind of look at the guys sitting next to us and neither of ‘em seems interested in even talking to us, much less partnering with a woman, so she looks at me and says, ‘Guess it’s you and me,’ like she already knows she’s radioactive, and I say something lame like, sure, you and me. And it’s not until we’re in the parking lot heading to her car that she says, ‘I’m Dani Reese,’ and we shake hands and I introduce myself, but in my head I’m thinking, Oh shit, this is the toxic psycho slut I was told to stay far, far away from, and now she’s my fucking partner.”

“So anyway, we start working the case, and I discover that yes, she’s wired pretty tight, but, you know, not in a bad way. She was just trying really hard to keep it all together, like most of us do, and turns out she was a damn good cop. She was smart, thorough, a good listener when suspects or witnesses were talking. She was sober, went to her AA meetings once in a while. No nonsense, no bullshit. She wasn’t chatty, by any means, but you know, after a while she loosened up a little, and sometimes we’d talk about stuff.”

“And next thing you know,” Carmen said.

“Yeah, exactly. Next thing I know, I’ve got this crush on her. I discover she’s nothing at all like the rumors about her, and rumors are usually full of shit anyway, so I shouldn’t be surprised … but I am. She’s not sleeping with her captain, hadn’t been for a while. She wasn’t seeing anybody. She got along okay with her homicide partner and was happy to get back to working with him again when our case was over, but she wasn’t sleeping with him, either. And – how can I say this? – I just liked her. She was a good person, just … quiet. A lot of bad shit had happened to her, but not her fault. And yes, she was a little damaged, but who wouldn’t be after what she’d been through? Tough enough when you're the son or daughter of a cop, worse when that cop is an asshole off duty, which I understand her father was, and a corrupt cop, too, it turns out. That's more than enough shit to carry around in your overnight bag. And no surprise whatsoever, I’m just as in love with the damaged part as the rest of her. The compassion thing, the ‘My love can make you whole’ thing. If you let me, maybe I can fix you.”

“Let me see, have I ever been that situation? Oh, right. I wrote the fucking book. ‘My love can heal you.’”

“The Big Book of Shane.”

“Illustrated and annotated. Did Dani know you were a lesbian?”

“I don’t know, but my guess is she did, because she never asked me whether I had a boyfriend or anything. We mostly just talked shop, and about our careers, cases we’d worked. We never went out for a beer, of course, because she was on the wagon, and I could never say, hey, wanna come over for a glass of wine.”

“So how bad was the crush? Did she know?”

“How bad? Scale of one to ten, maybe an eight. Fuck it. Nine. Did she know? Hell if I know. She never said anything. People frequently don’t know when somebody has a crush on you, and sometimes all it is, they just want to get into your pants, jump your bones--”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that--”

Lauren laughed. “No, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But sometimes when you get vibes, it’s usually just fucking they want, lust, not love. Anyway, nothing ever happened during the case, and when it was over I lost track of her and haven’t run into her since. It was just … every week that went by, it just got worse and worse. I ate my heart out. Christ, she was so beautiful. Dani Reese. Had these incredible eyes. You could just fall into them. And the way she wore her hair back, had this tiny bun in the back. But she always had this strand of hair, usually on the left, once in a while on the right, once in a while both. Hanging loose. And I just wanted, you know…”

“Reach over and tuck it back.”

“Yeah. It was like her signature thing, this leather jacket she always wore, and this lose strand of hair.”

“Displaying her rebellious, wild side. Sounds like maybe she's your hang-up,” Carmen said. “As long as you've got her in your head, you can't think about anybody else. Can't let somebody else in.”

“Maybe,” Lauren sighed. “Why do we do it? We love the Bad Boys and the Bad Girls. The damaged, the dented and dinged and the broken. Lesbian or straight, we love the ones we can’t have, or shouldn't have, and/or can’t possibly fix. The more unavailable they are the more we want them. The emotionally unavailable ones. The commitment-phobes. The runaway brides. Sometimes even the crazies. What the hell is wrong with us?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Carmen said.

They let two blocks go by. “Life sure is fucked up sometimes,” Lauren said.

“Sure is.”

“Ghosts,” Lauren said. “Those fucking ghosts.”

“Those fucking ghosts,” Carmen agreed.

“How do you get rid of them?”

“I have a theory,” Carmen said. “I don't think you can do it yourself. I think maybe the only person who can do that for you is the next person you fall in love with. Only she can drive out the ghost of the one before her. You're stuck with Dani until somebody new comes along and drives her ghost away.”

“Did you think your San Diego girl -- what was her name?”

“Robin.”

“Did you think Robin would drive the ghost of Shane away?”

“I don't think I thought of it in those terms. But maybe yes, I wanted the ghost of Shane to go away. Stay … and also go away.”

They drove for a while.

“Here’s a guilty secret,” Carmen said. “I met Robin because I cheated on Shane.”

Lauren took her eyes off the highway, looked at Carmen, looked back.

“Yeah. Me. Unfaithful. Miss Poster Girl for Lesbian Monogamy. It was supposed to be a meaningless grudge fuck. Shane had cheated on me, went and fucked Cheri Jaffe with this fancy, expensive, glove-leather strap-on with jewels on it, so one night at a DJ gig, out of the clear blue, I thought, what the fuck. There’s a cute, quiet chick giving me the stare, you know, and the needle on the gaydar gauge is moving up and up. And I think, okay, Shane, you fucked Cherie, I’m gonna fuck this one and then tell you all the details so it makes you feel like shit.”

“Uh-huh. But that’s not how it turned out.”

“Yes and no. I fucked her, all right, and told Shane, too, on the spur of the moment a couple weeks later, without the details. Shane didn't care about them, just yes or no, did I do it or not.” A block went by.

“There seem to be two kinds of people,” Carmen said. “People like Shane, they go from relationship to relationship, literally twice a week in Shane’s case, and the idea of monogamy, the idea of settling down with one permanent, long-term lover, one life partner, just doesn't seem to mean anything to them. Then there's people like me. Not only do I not want to fuck a thousand women, I don't even want to fuck ten. Not five. Not even two. All I want is just that one single person, and that would make me happy. Shane and I, we used to talk about birds. We even got these matching bird tattoos, on the backs of our necks.” She leaned forward, pulled her ponytail out of the way so Lauren could see, then sat back. “It symbolized the fact that birds mate for life. Well, that's me. I just want one person, one mate for life. Shane, she wants one mate only until the sun comes up tomorrow morning and she has to get up and go to work. Then it's time to move on to the next one.”

They drove for a while.

“Can I ask why did you agreed to get married?” Lauren asked. “If you knew this about her?”

“Damned if I know. Well, that's not true. I do know. I even knew back then.”

“Let me guess. Because you believed she'd change. If you loved her strong enough and hard enough, she would change, and be yours forever. Your love could fix her.”

“Yes. Silly, isn't it?”

“I don't think it's silly at all.” Lauren said. “It's how I'd want my lover to be. I think it's how I'd be myself.”

They drove for a while.

“You know what I learned?” Carmen asked. “I learned that lesbians are a lot like straight women. You know that cliché about how when a man and woman get married, the woman marries the guy hoping she can change him. The guy marries the woman hoping she'll never change, she’ll always be the same as when he married her. And they are both wrong, and neither gets what they want. He never changes, and she always does. Well, I think the same thing can happen to lesbians. I wanted to marry Shane, hoping that my love would be strong enough and powerful enough and magical enough to make her change her ways. And she wanted to marry me, hoping I would always stay the same as I was the day we met. So she and I weren't an iota's worth of difference from a straight couple. One partner is the monogamous, loyal, faithful nest-builder, and the other one is out trying to get into the pants of every piece of tail he can find.”

They rode for a while.

“What was so special about Dani?” Carmen asked.

“I'm afraid to tell you, you're going to think it's really pathetic.”

“No, I'm not.”

“I know. But maybe it really is neurotic of me, or something. Anyway, here it is. You know what ‘resting bitch face’ is? I think there’s other kinds, too. Maybe you don't know this about yourself, Carmen, but you're always smiling. You're cheerful and upbeat, and one of those out-in-the-open, what-you-see-is-what-you-get people. You have ‘resting happy face.’ Dani was the opposite. She was always frowning and brooding. ‘Resting unhappy face.’ I know it sounds weird, but she always looked like she was in pain, or, you know, was sad, or thinking about some awful thing in her life. She almost never smiled or laughed, but when she did, it was this big fucking surprise, and it lit up the room. But it was because she always had this intense, inward, painful frown on her face, I always felt ... I don't know ...”

“You always felt you wanted to put your arms around her, and comfort her.”

“Yes.”

“Tell her everything was going to be okay,” Carmen said. “That you'd make it okay, whatever it was. That you could make her happy. You could take away the pain. You could make her laugh.”

“Ah, so you’re a rescuer,” Lauren said. “White Knight Syndrome. Me, too.”

“Sure. With Shane, in fact. I always knew she was going through life dragging around these awful things, these psychic wounds. Being an orphan. Being abandoned. Even the promiscuity … that was a kind of injury, too. And if she would just let me love her enough, I could take her pain away. I would give her all the love she never had before. I would give her the home she'd never had, the caring, the companionship, the stability. I'd build a nest for her. Which assumes she wanted or needed a nest, and you know what they say about assumptions. I thought ... I thought love could fix things. If you had enough of it, if you gave it, all of it, well, it would be enough. It would be enough to fix Shane. Repair all those years of hardship and grief. Me, Carmen the Incredible, I had the power, because I had the love, and it would be all I needed. It would be enough. I could give her something she never had, happiness. Contentment.”

“But it wasn't enough.”

“No. Not even close. So what I learned was—”

“—we can't fix other people,” Lauren finished for her.

“No. We can't fix other people. I'm not even sure we can fix ourselves.”

“Actually,” Lauren said, “I believe that sometimes we can fix other people, just not too often, and only if they aren't too far gone to be fixed. But yes, by and large, I agree with you. There are people we just can't fix, and we have to learn to let them go. We have to be careful not to fall in love with them, and we just have to walk away. We have to let them go.”

“Like Dani,” Carmen said. “Can't fix her, can't take away her pain, and can't make her a lesbian.”

“Like my Dani. And your Robin. And like Shane. Can't have them, can't fix them. You can love them, but it doesn’t do any good, and you just wind up getting hurt yourself.”

“Yep.”

“Fucking ghosts,” Lauren said. Carmen said nothing, and looked out the window.


	15. Divided Highway

"Okay, pull over here," Detective Sgt. Collins said.

Lauren put on her hazard flashers and pulled off the road onto the shoulder.

"Be careful getting out," Collins said. "They'll clip you."

The shoulder was wide enough for Lauren's cruiser, but just barely. Collins and Carmen, who was riding in the back, carefully opened their passenger-side doors so they didn't hit the metal guard rail, and squeezed out. The I-99 was a four-lane divided highway and north of Meadows Field Airport was ag-industrial. A cement wall of waist-high jersey barriers ran down the medium, separating them from the far two lanes of northbound traffic and a big John Deere farm equipment dealer a hundred yards down the road. The landscape was flat, barren, dry, dusty, and occupied by "farms" of agricultural fertilizer tanks lined up row on road by high chain-link fencing, acres of earthmoving equipment, oil-refinery-type tanks, huge silos and loading storage facilities all competing with fields of oil-drilling equipment. There were huge lots full of Class 6, 7, 8 and 9 truck tractors for sale, Freightliners and Peterbilts, Macks, Internationals, Whites and White subsidiary Western Stars, day cabs and sleepers of varying capacity and refinement. There were fields of flatbeds and several kinds of trailers, refrigerated, non-refrigerated, and for carrying livestock. A pair of railroad tracks paralleled the southbound side, as did long access roads here and there. To the south and a little east was the airport, where small planes and short-hop aircraft came and went, and on the far, far horizon beyond Bakersfield under a blue, cloudless sky the peak of Tehachapi Mountain guarded the southern entrance of the San Joaquin Valley from the Mojave Desert on the other side. To the north, rectangular plots of farmland ran for more than 400 miles up Central Valley, one third of California. About halfway up lay Carmen's new home town on San Francisco Bay, and beyond the far, far end somewhere near Oregon, Alice sat in a jail cell contemplating her sins and the next time she was likely to enjoy a soy latte at _The Planet_.

They had rolled into Bakersfield at quarter to four and picked up Collins at the Sheriff's Department detective division building on L Street between Truxtun and 14th, behind the Superior Court building. Collins was a stocky man in his early 50s who sported a modest Zapata mustache. He had what Carmen suspected was a Farmer John tan, deeply tanned face and neck but probably snow-white chest and arms. He had a florid complexion that failed to hide broken the broken arteries of a drinker high on his cheeks. He wore a light windbreaker, mainly to conceal the pistol on his belt, over a white shirt and khakis. He carried a manila folder with papers in it.

"I'm Hancock, we spoke on the phone," Lauren said, flashing her ID folder, although Collins never glanced at it, "and this is Morales." Carmen thought, Cool! He'll think I'm a cop, too.

"Nice to meet you ladies," Collins said, shaking hands. "LA's finest. Okay, LASD's finest. You want to go in your car? I can navigate." He sat in the front of Lauren's car and gave her directions to the 204, which joined the 99 just south of a place called Oil Junction. They drove past Exit 31 to a place called Saco, and then after a minute Collins said, "It's there, on the other side of the road. Normally you'd have to drive up to Exit 37 five miles up the road to turn around and come back, but there's a crossover for police and emergency vehicles coming up, so get in the left lane."

They waited in the crossover as southbound 18-wheelers whooshed past, along with tank trucks, trucks carrying livestock, flatbed trailers loaded with oil drilling gear, Trailways and Greyhound buses and of course cars. It wasn't that there was a lot of traffic, just enough of it moving at high speed there were few breaks big enough to turn into. "Jesus," Lauren muttered. "Is it always like this?"

"Pretty much," Collins said. "It gets better after sunset, and finally slows down around ten or eleven at night. Then it's mostly truckers and drunks. Could be worse, though."

"How's that?"

"Could be LA."

"Got that right," said Carmen from the back seat. "At least this stuff is moving, not sitting still gridlocked."

"Hold on," Lauren said, peeling out into a break in the traffic in the left lane then swerving almost immediately into the right lane.

"Nice," Collins said. "A mile or so. I'll tell you when."

When they'd parked Collins stood in front of the car and pulled two sheets of paper from his manila folder. The top one was a photocopy of a CSI map of the crime scene. "Just making sure my memory is correct," Collins said, pointing. "There, at the base of the third stanchion."

A galvanized metal guardrail ran along the side of the highway back about fifteen feet from the shoulder, to keep any vehicle going off the road from going down a shallow embankment into a drainage ditch. On the far side of the guardrail but right next to it clumps of tall bushes grew. There were gaps, and it was easy to see through to the flat plain on the other side. It was an open, vacant lot several hundred yards long, flanked on either side by chain-linked fencing where farm equipment was stored.

"The body was right here," Collins said, showing them the CSI sketch. "Tire marks were back there on the shoulder when the car came off the road to get him. That's why there was a little bit of an angle that threw the body over here, maybe 50, 60 feet in the air. The body actually hit the guardrail, then fell down at the base of the stanchion. Here's a photograph, if you want to look at it."

Collins showed them another photocopy. Carmen glanced at it then quickly looked away. Lauren studied it. All it showed was a dark lump of something that in poor light conditions wouldn't be recognizable. In better light, you could see an arm lying out from the main lump, with the hand visible, at an unnatural angle. There was a smear of something that was probably blood on the face of the guardrail. If Max wasn't killed instantly by the vehicle, Lauren thought, he died instantly when he flew into the guardrail. Either way, it was over in a second or two, no more.

Lauren turned and looked back, and did a 360-degree turn. The angles were such that the body wouldn't have been very visible from the driver's seat of a passenger car, just a dark lump of roadside detritus if you weren't paying attention, and who would? But the driver of an 18-wheeler sitting much higher in the air had a better view looking down. That is, if the driver was paying attention. A fresh trucker just starting his day and wired on his morning coffee might be alert enough. She wondered how many vehicles over how many hours had driven past Max Sweeney and never noticed a thing. A lot, would be her guess.

"Do you know what time the call came in?" she asked.

"About 7:40."

"What time was sunrise? And the weather?"

"Sun was well up, full daylight. Clear and sunny, no rain overnight. None of that Tule fog we often get."

"Can you put it all together for me?"

"Sure. At first it looked simple, but then it got really complicated and interesting."

"How so?" Carmen asked.

"Stay with me, we'll get there," Collins said. "Okay, phone call comes in at 7:40 to California Highway Patrol, trucker says he thinks he saw a body by the side of the road but wasn't sure. Morning traffic, heavy but moving, you have to pay attention to what's in front of you, no admiring our beautiful scenery. No way he could stop and anyway nobody was going to do that, not on this stretch and not at that hour. But he's yakking on his Bluetooth, you know, and he's happy to leave his name, address, who he works for, where's he's coming from and where he's going, you know, making it crystal clear he's just a passing guy, but he's also fairly sure he saw what he saw, enough to make a phone call."

"Right."

"Right. And the CHP dispatcher can call up the name and license and all that right on her screen and it all checks out, he seems to be who he says he is, so she radios a patrol car to head southbound looking for a body between exits 37 and 31. Few minutes later the car reports in, I can give you the name and badge number if you need it—"

"No, that's okay. Keep going."

"So he says he found the body, and CHP calls Kern County, that's us, and we send out a full team. The forensics squad does their thing, body's cold, been dead several hours. Can't tell officially until the autopsy, yadda yadda, but they're sure the body has been hit by a vehicle, lots of broken bones, body is like a rag doll, arms and legs at funny angles. Maybe average layman couldn't tell, but the forensics people have seen enough people hit by cars. No signs of foul play that can't be explained by being hit by a vehicle, no obvious gunshot wounds or strangulation marks, nothing like that. So they tell CHP and our guys what they think, with all the preliminary disclaimers. And then they say something else, the first odd thing or rather the first thing that became odd in retrospect. They say there's a heavy smell of vomit around the mouth, and some vomit on the chest, down the front of the guy's jacket. By this time the accident recreation people have found tire tracks, and they've got cones out blocking the right-hand lane, and traffic's backed up for a mile, but it can't be helped. And they all pow-wow and they don't like what they see, looks like the vehicle came off the roadway to clip the guy, so they say, let's get a homicide team out here, pretty standard CYA if you suspect homicide, all that—"

"Right, right," Lauren said. "I worked homicide for a couple years before I went to Missing Persons."

"Right, so you know the drill. So my partner and I get the call-out and we arrive on the scene and get briefed. And the tech says the vic vomited all down his front, and was probably drunk, but they'll need the tests, but the smell of vomit has covered up the smell of booze, so they don't really know. So we talk about a drunk walking down the road or hitchhiking and gets clipped, happens all the time, but the tire tracks seem to show the vehicle came off the road, suggesting the vic didn't stumble out into the road accidentally or in a suicide attempt, which also happens sometimes. Where did he do his drinking? Ain't no bars north of here for a long ways, all farmland, mostly. Only bars to the south down by the airport for the closest, and that's just plain the wrong direction. Vic was walking toward them, not away from. So my partner says, okay, where did he puke? Maybe that will tell us something. And the techs say they walked a hundred yards up and down the road and didn't find anything, which seems a little odd but okay, he threw up somewhere else, maybe wherever he was drinking, but we start talking about if you're drunk enough to puke all down your front, how drunk were you and how did you get here midway between two exits six miles apart on a four-lane, high-speed divided highway and there's no bars around. So where was he coming from and where was he going to, and why was he walking instead of driving. If too drunk to drive, where’s his car? So we don't have much of anything, but what little we have we just don't like, you know?"

"Sure, one of those instinct things. You don't know why but you know something's not right."

"Yep. So we expand the search perimeter for the puke, so we send the CHP guy southbound for half a mile on foot, and my partner and I go north. And my partner says he'll cross over the four lanes and walk up the northbound side, because we don't know where the vic was coming from, maybe he was going northbound, said fuck it, crossed over and started southbound. So anyway we start walking, and sure enough half a mile up the road on the northbound shoulder my partner smells puke and finds a puddle, and we send a tech up and the tech takes a sample. Took a few days for the labs to come back, but it was the same as on the front of the guy, stomach contents matched, all that. It was Sweeney's vomit."

"So you have Max half a mile north on the northbound shoulder puking his guts out some short period of time before he's struck and killed off the southbound shoulder."

"Right."

"And no other signs of foul play, no signs of robbery?"

“Nope, nothing. Wallet and ID in the hip pocket, fourteen bucks in it. We found out later Sweeney, didn't make a lot of money in the first place, was borderline making it, so fourteen bucks in his wallet wasn't suspicious. No car keys and no house keys. If you don't own a car, no car keys isn't suspicious. It only becomes suspicious much later when you learn the vic actually did own a car."

"So it's all up to the forensics reports and ID checks to come back," Lauren said. "Blood test, stomach contents, puke, autopsy broken bones, paint chips from the striking vehicle, tire tracks, all that."

"Right. But the next surprise rolls in that night from the coroner's division. The autopsy was still a day away but they undressed the body to put in a cold storage locker and discovered this Max Sweeney was a tranny, and did we know that? And I said no, we didn't know."

"What did you make of that?" Carmen asked, her voice and face carefully neutral.

"Not much. I guess twenty, thirty years ago we'd have said, Holy shit, but not today. Nothing surprises us anymore, you know? Gay, straight, tats, piercings, body sculpting. If you think being two hours out of LA has somehow protected us from the freak shows you'd be wrong. It's a freak world, is what it is. I'm not saying a tranny is a freak, that's not what I'm saying—"

"Just seen it all, no surprises."

"That's right."

"Did you think that might be part of a motive for a homicide?" Lauren asked.

"Not really. The thing is, the killer would probably have to know the vic pretty well to know he was a tranny, right? But most people are murdered by someone who knows them pretty well anyway, so that just simply leaves us back where we started. So, no, Sweeney being a transman – I understand that's the correct term -- didn't mean much, just one of a dozen things to keep in mind."

"So then what happened?"

"Routine stuff while we waited for all the ID, lab work and autopsy stuff. We interviewed the place where he worked, didn't turn up much. He lived in a rooming house, nothing much there, same story both places, moved into Bakersfield about four months earlier, kept to himself, pretty quiet, no trouble, no particular sign of booze or drugs, not very friendly but nothing out of the ordinary. Nobody knew he was trans, and we didn't run across anyone who seemed to have cared one way or the other. We searched his room at the boarding house, found nothing unusual until we came to his birth certificate under the name Moira Sweeney, but by then we knew anyway. The next surprise was the car. Traffic records told us he had one registered and currently updated with no wants or warrants, and both his landlord and the guy who owned the computer shop confirmed Sweeney had a car, an old blue Subaru beater, and his boss was pretty sure he'd driven it to work the day he died. So we started looking for it, put out a BOLO, and started calling used car lots and junkyards and repair shops to see if it had broken down anywhere or Sweeney had sold it, but we got nothing. Of course you don't know you've got nothing for a week or two until nothing has come in. And we found no car keys and no keys to his boarding house or room, if any, and no work keys, if he had any. So now we have missing car keys and missing house keys, and he had a work key, too, also missing."

"Any gay bars in Bakersfield?" Lauren asked.

"One," Collins said. "The Casablanca on N Street. They have karaoke and drag shows once in a while. Ten-dollar cover charge. Couple others closed a few years ago. Bakersfield ain't exactly the Castro District, you know? Anyway, we actually went to the Casa and showed Sweeney's photo from his DMV file, and got zip. One bartender thought maybe Sweeney'd been in, but not recently and certainly not the night before, so far as he knew. They have a couple security guys who work the door, but they didn't recognize him. If Sweeney didn't have much money I think the ten-dollar cover would have kept him out. So, nothing, although we checked."

Lauren and Carmen nodded, and an 18-wheeler whooshed by smelling of livestock on board.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Collins said, "but we also ran his photo past the vice squad, see if he'd been picked up in a men's room or whatever. But they had nothing."

"Due diligence," Lauren said. "No problem. Then what?"

"First thing to come back was blood alcohol, which registered point 18 at time of death, more than twice the legal limit for driving, but it just confirmed what we already suspected, so no help there. Time-of-death finalized at about 3:30 a.m.—"

"Ninety minutes after any bars would have closed," Lauren said. "If you were going to puke you'd do it sooner than 90 minutes after you left the bar."

"Right, and that becomes important in a minute. Tox screen comes in, shows some oxy in his system."

"A lot?" Carmen asked.

"We'll get there," Collins said."

"I've got an idea," Lauren said. "I've seen all I need to see in daylight, and my partner and I are getting hungry. Let's go find a restaurant where we can talk. We haven't even begun to talk about the Schecter end of the case. Where would you recommend we go?"

"You gals on per diem?"

"Don't worry about it. We're meat and potatoes people."

"Okay, then," Collins said. "I got just the place."

Lauren and Collins started back to the car.

Carmen stared at the spot where Max's body had lain for several hours in the dark, at the base of a guardrail stanchion. It was the second time in a week Lauren had driven her to a place where someone she knew had died. No, not "died." Been murdered. One a former lover – maybe that was too strong a word, but "fuck buddy" didn't seem right, either. Someone who, despite many flaws, Carmen had liked, and pretty much taught how to be a skillful lesbian. And then someone also with many flaws Carmen had hated. No, that wasn't right, either, "hated" was also too strong a word; "disliked" would do. But, curiously, another of Jenny's fuck buddies, and another member of their circle of friends. But whether she had liked Max Sweeney or not, there was no reason Max should have died here, a shattered heap indistinguishable from a littered garbage bag that had fallen out of the back of a pickup, as 18-wheelers carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, hogs, and avocados whooshed by in the darkness. She shuddered, and turned to walk back to the car.

* * *

Collins guided Lauren to the Padre Hotel on 18th Street in downtown Bakersfield just a few blocks from the detective division where he'd left his car. "Great food here," he said, as they waited for a maitre'd to seat them in the Belvedere Room. "It's basically an upscale steakhouse, but you can rely on the seafood, if you swing that way."

Lauren and Carmen glanced at each other. Collins was looking the other way.

"Don't you need a reservation for a place like this?" Carmen asked.

"Oh, sure," Collins said. "But they know me here, and there's the perks of carrying a badge, you know how that goes, right?"

"Copy that," Carmen said. She caught a glimpse of Lauren's grin as she turned her face away from Collins. Maybe I'd make a pretty convincing homicide detective after all, Carmen thought, although probably not like Lauren's secret crush, Dani, the straight but not straight-arrow rehab survivor they'd talked about.

Carmen and Lauren ordered the wild king salmon and, predictably, Collins went for the 20-ounce bone-in ribeye. Carmen wondered if Collins' heart would let him live long enough to get to Social Security, but she doubted it. She was willing to bet his triglycerides and LDLs were through the roof.

"Okay," Collins said, handing his menu to the waiter. "Let's get this over before the food comes. Autopsy and stomach contents. One of the cutters comes into the squad room with his report and hands it to me, then makes himself at home in my chair. 'You're gonna have questions,' he says. So I start reading. Long story short, Sweeney vomited because he had drunk a large quantity of vodka in a very, very short time, maybe half to three quarters of a bottle, but hard to tell since he puked it up. But enough to register that point one-eight on the test, and it was rising quick. No way to tell how high it might have gone."

"High enough to kill him?"

"I asked. Hard to tell all by itself, the coroner says, but there's more. Sweeney had chased the vodka with maybe a dozen oxycontins. There was still vodka and some pill slush left in his stomach, probably not enough to kill him, because he'd puked a lot of it."

"Jesus," Carmen murmured. She thought she might be ill herself.

"So what did your guy think," Lauren asked. "Suicide attempt?"

"Sure, and who wouldn't?" Collins said. "But our guy is pretty good. He tests the fingers."

"Ahh," Lauren said, catching on. She turned to Carmen, just to make sure she was following. "Max stuck his fingers down his throat, he made himself puke all the stuff in his stomach."

"Because he changed his mind about suicide?" Carmen asked.

"That's one possibility," Collins said. "The other possibility is he was forced to drink the vodka and swallow the pills under duress, because somebody was trying to kill him with booze and drugs."

"And if he doesn't collapse and die by the side of the road in the middle of the night, he staggers into the path of an 18-wheeler, same difference, mission accomplished," Lauren said.

"That's grotesque," Carmen said.

Collins shrugged. "I have a theory, if you want to hear it. It ties in with the car."

"Go," Lauren said.

"Suppose it's not suicide, but homicide, like we think. Where's Sweeney's car? How did he get out there? How was he able to drive if he'd swallowed that much vodka and the oxy was kicking in? How could he make his own car disappear, which it has, and why would he even bother if he was trying to kill himself? Fuck the car, right? Who gives a shit. But it's almost two years later, and we still haven't found it, although I know where it is."

"Where?"

"Hang on, we'll get there. Sorry to tease you, but I like to tell it my own way, in sequence."

"Okay."

"So it's a homicide, because we need somebody to get Sweeney out there and then make the car disappear. So my theory is, Sweeney is the passenger in his own car, and the killer is driving it. Someway, somehow, at some unknown location and for whatever reason, the killer gets Sweeney to drink most of a bottle of vodka and swallow a handful of commonly available, untraceable pills. My guess is the killer has a gun, because why else would anybody go along willingly? So they are in the car heading north on the 99—"

"North, out of Bakersfield," Carmen said.

"Right."

"Why north?"

"Four hundred and fifty miles of farmland and oil fields to dispose of a body, let it rot for a few days or weeks or months in the sun before anybody finds it."

"Okay."

"I know," Collins said as their salads arrived. "You're dotting the eyes and crossing the tees. So anyway, they're heading north and Sweeney puts his fingers down his throat and starts to puke. That wasn't supposed to happen and now it's a problem."

"Because…?"

"Because the puke is on the passenger side," Lauren said. "It wouldn't matter if it was on the driver's side. But it demonstrates Max wasn't driving."

"Bingo," Collins said, pushing aside his salad plate as his ribeye arrived. "Go ahead, Hancock, you got it. Finish it up."

"The driver slams on the brakes and pulls over. Max jumps out of the car, maybe sick, maybe trying to get away, or both. It's pitch black except for headlights, if there's anything coming, and if the killer gets out of the car and tries to shoot him, it ruins the suicide/traffic accident scenario—"

"And Max might have been able to run far enough in the darkness," Carmen said. "He ran south behind the car, to get out of the headlights."

"Max knows enough to know it's a divided highway and his only chance is to cross over to the southbound side where the driver can't do a U-turn without going a few miles up the road."

"Why not run inland, away from the highway?"

"Chain link fence," Collins said, and an access road. "Crossing the highway was the smarter move."

"And before he does, he pukes again, getting rid of the vodka and pills, if he can. Of course, he's already half-drunk and maybe woozy."

"Yes, and maybe there's traffic, trucks coming by, and that means the killer can't do anything until they pass, and it gives your guy the opportunity to puke, then cross the road."

"So Max crosses to the southbound side, and starts walking south. Meanwhile the killer drives up to Exit 37 and comes back southbound, or illegally uses the crossover. He sees Max walking and comes over onto the shoulder and runs him down. Was Max facing the car or facing away?"

"Facing the car. He saw it coming. Maybe he'd been hitchhiking, maybe not, but it got him and threw him fifty, sixty feet in the air into the guardrail."

"I hope he was drunk enough not to know what was about to happen," Carmen said.

"We'll never know," Lauren said. Collins grunted, cutting another piece of steak.

"You said you know where the car is," Carmen said.

Collins was chewing. "Hancock?"

"It's out there somewhere in the valley. In some arroyo, some gully, some junkyard. Probably torched."

"Count on it," Collins said. "Fire destroys the driver's fingerprints, destroys the puke, destroys any other useful forensics. And before he sets it on fire he removes the license plates and any other identifying stuff that might survive a fire. Probably can't even tell it was once a blue Subaru. It'll still have the VIN numbers, but nobody who comes across it will go to the trouble of looking it up. It'll just be another burned-out wreck out there, with hundreds of others. Who knows? Maybe it's already been found and the torched remains sold to a junkyard for $10 as scrap. The car is not only missing, it may not even exist anymore."

"How much of this theory can be proved in court?" Carmen asked.

"Almost none," Collins said. "We can't prove it was his own car that hit him, even though I'm dead certain it was, because the lab guys have paint chips from a blue Subaru from that paint batch, which covers about two years, and we have tire tracks from tires that might have come from Sweeney's car, but we don't have the car itself to match them with, and my guess is we never will. But the accident reconstruction guys tell us in a report I photocopied into your folder that the wheelbase of the vehicle that came off the highway was a about a hundred and four inches and front tires about 57 inches apart. Guess what the wheelbase and tire distance of a 2002 Subaru Outback is? So my theory remains just a theory. You guys aren't eating much. You want dessert?"

* * *

"Why don't you give me your folder on the Schecter case and I'll start reading while you finish eating," Collins said, although Lauren and Carmen had barely started, and their salmon was cold. Lauren handed him the manila folder with the photocopied pages from the Schecter murder book. She had not included the few pages that mentioned her long-ago interview with Carmen, which in any case wasn't useful since Carmen was 800 miles away and only knew background stuff.

Carmen had only pushed her food around her plate, but now that she started actually eating she realized she was hungry, and thirsty, too, in spite of the glass of ice water she'd just drunk. Still, she felt weird, being hungry after visiting a murder scene and discussing the awful details of vomit. Then she realized real police do this all the time, day in, day out. Homicides, rapes, stabbings, horrific traffic accidents, dead bodies recent or decomposing, drowned babies, then coffee and a couple of donuts, or a giant chili hot dog at Pink's. You had to be able to detach yourself from reality. The salmon was really good.

"Interesting," Collins said, closing the folder.

"Okay," Lauren said. "What do you think?"

"Well, there's not a shred of evidence connecting our two murders except that Sweeney was present at the first one. But I don't have to tell you this, but cops hate coincidences. I hate them, and I bet you do, too. I never met a cop who didn't."

"You still haven't," Lauren said.

"So what I think is, same unsub did both," Collins said.

"Rollo Tomasi," Carmen said.

"Who's that?" Collins asked, then he remembered. Lauren did, too. Rollo Tomasi was the made-up name of the unsub who had shot Guy Pierce's policeman father in the movie _LA_ _Confidential_.

"All my unsubs are named Rollo Tomasi," Carmen said. "Why do you think it's the same person?"

"Because we have a pattern," Collins said.

"That's what I thought, too," Lauren said. She turned to Carmen. "You see it?"

Carmen knitted her brows, thinking. "Both were half-assed attempts to make them look like accidents."

"You get an A plus, grasshopper," Lauren said. "I'm not convinced the Schecter murder was premeditated, but once Jenny fell off the deck, the killer deliberately rolled her into the pool. That had to be spontaneous."

"Sweeney's different, but also the same," Collins said. "Pre-meditation all over the place, but it went south at the last minute, Sweeney puking in the car then escaping, if my guess is right, and having to be run down on the shoulder of the highway instead of a booze-and-drug overdose suicide or pedestrian accident."

"And then the killer had to find a way to get rid of the car," Lauren said, "which I don't think was part of the original plan."

"Which means we can build a pretty good picture of the killer," Collins said. "Want me to start?"

"Go for it," Lauren said.

"Pretty quick-witted. Maybe not smart, but certainly cunning. Thinks fast on his feet, or her feet. Doesn't panic, very cool customer. Able to improvise. Resourceful. Seizes opportunities. Acts decisively when necessary."

"Kills without compunction," Lauren said.

"A serial killer?" Carmen asked.

Collins and Lauren thought about it.

"I don't think so," Lauren said. "I'm not seeing that. Yes, the killer is a sociopath, almost certainly has no conscience, but that's not the same thing. I still think Jenny's murder was spontaneous. Worst case, Max's murder has some tie-in to Jenny, but we just don't know what it is yet, because we haven't looked into it and haven't found it. But I know what you were worrying about."

"What's that?" Carmen asked.

"That somebody is or was stalking the group of eight women who were there that night, because now a quarter of them are dead. Who's next? Is that what you were thinking?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about the group," Collins said. "Have you re-interviewed all of them?"

"Not yet," Lauren said. "We just started tracking them down when we ran across Sweeney's homicide."

"Just as well," Collins said. "You'd just have to go back and talk to them again in light of this new information."

"Excuse me, I've got to go to the ladies room," Carmen said, standing up. "Lauren, I'll take a coffee if the waiter comes by." Since sitting down Carmen had downed two glasses of water and two glasses of wine, and now it was time to do something about it.

When she was out of earshot Collins said, "I take it your partner's new?"

"Trainee," Lauren said. "Cadet. New mentoring program, one of those things."

"She even graduate from the academy?"

"Not yet."

"She's not even carrying a gun."

"No, she hasn't qualified at the range yet." It wasn't surprising that Collins had found time to check out Carmen's shape.

"I figured. One of those affirmative action things, I bet. She banging somebody upstairs?"

'Uh, no, she's still getting over a relationship. She was engaged to be married, and it fell apart at the last minute."

"I had a couple of them, but they usually fell apart after I got married, not before. That way the exes get to keep big parts of my salary. My third one seems to be sticking."

"Three's a charm," Lauren said. Hard to believe an overweight, hard-drinking cop had a divorce or two in his past, Lauren thought sarcastically, but she played it as straight as she could. "In Carmen's defense, she's pretty smart, and she learns fast. And she's not political, not a department climber or ass-kisser. What you see is what you get. I could have done a lot worse."

"Yeah, I guess." Lauren was afraid Collins was going to go on about how back in his day, blah blah blah, but he had the good sense to keep quiet until Carmen returned.

"What did I miss?" Carmen asked sitting down and putting cream and Sweet-and-Low in her coffee.

"Nothing, just waiting for you," Lauren said.

"Give me your overview of the Schecter thing," Collins said.

"Eight women in West Hollywood having a wine-and-cheese goodbye party for two of them, who were in the process of moving to New York. It was at their house, nice place, backyard pool. White collar professionals, good to very good incomes—"

"All lesbians?"

"No, not all," Lauren said quickly, sensing Carmen going rigid. "Some were, some weren't, some bi."

"Just asking," Collins said.

"Understood. Schecter was next-door neighbor and the one organizing the party, she was putting together a farewell goodbye tape. The whole group had known each other for quite some time, no strangers, nobody new to the group."

"I'm guessing history among them."

"Sure, that's a given, especially in a tight-knit lesbian community. And as it happens, everybody there was pissed at Schecter for one thing or another she had done or said. So yes, lots of anger at Schecter, maybe motives for murder, but having said that, only a few possibly strong enough for drowning somebody."

"Yeah, yeah, but we both know people will kill each other over a torn two-dollar bill, let alone anything we'd consider a big deal."

"Yes, we know. All we're saying is, everyone pissed at her, and two or three very, very pissed, but nothing so glaringly strong that any one person stood out."

"But you have a confession from the one up at Humboldt."

"We do, and that's a major problem. We have lots of evidence she didn't do it and was covering up for somebody, and it backfired on her. Also, the investigation was short-circuited by the confession, and we've since found one other very strong suspect who was never properly investigated, and maybe a couple more. One of our stronger suspects from the group was Sweeney."

"She the strongest suspect? Not whatshername at Humboldt?"

"Her name is Alice Pieszecki. Worst case, I'd rank her as maybe fifth or sixth suspect."

"She'd have been near the back of the line," Carmen said quietly. “The problem is, there was a line."

"Schecter was fucking the roommate, right? Significant other's always your best suspect."

"Yes, that's true 80 or 90 percent of the time," Lauren agreed, "but this time we're pretty certain this is one of the 10 percenters."

"Okay, but what about Sweeney?"

Lauren and Carmen looked at each other. "I'm not following," Lauren said.

"This guy, Tom. The ex, the father of Sweeney's baby."

"Oh. Right. On track now. Didn't you guys take a look at him back when Max got run down?"

Collins shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

"Oh, shit," Lauren said. "You might as well tell us."

"Yeah, I know. I was going to. See, about two weeks after the Sweeney murder I went on vacation. My wife and me, and our daughter and son-in-law. We took this cruise to Hawaii. We've been planning it for years. Cruise to and from, cruise around, land tours, the whole thing. Cost a small fortune, but worth every penny. We signed up a year ahead, and it was all booked and paid for eight months in advance. I had plenty of vacation time, and scheduled it long, long in advance. What I'm saying is, Osama bin Fucking Laden could have parachuted into Bakersfield along with Bonnie and Clyde and the Russian mob, but my wife and me and Betty Lou and Frank, we were getting on that fucking boat in Long Beach that particular morning and going to Hawaii, you get what I'm saying? If it sounds like I'm apologizing I'm not. But we were getting on that boat, that's all there was to it."

"We understand," Carmen said. "You don't need to justify it. You went on vacation. You're entitled."

"Thank you. So what I'm saying is, right about the time I went, the forensic stuff starts to trickle in, a piece here, a piece there. Background checks. Fingerprints, wants and warrants, no BOLO results on the car, CHP reconstruction report of the crime scene. Tire marks. It was twelve fucking days before we were able to look at it well enough to say, okay, this is a murder, this is deliberate vehicular homicide, not a suicide, not some kind of accident. And you know all the stuff about solving homicides, the first 48 hours, blah blah blah."

"Yes, most get solved in the first 48 hours, and after that the trail starts going cold."

"Right. You see that on TV all the time, and it's one of the few things they ever get right. So my point is, by the time we see it's a homicide the fucker is already almost two weeks old."

"Right. And you're about to head out of town."

"For three weeks. Yes, we weren't running down to Tahoe for a long weekend. I'm out three weeks, and they give my partner, who was almost brand new to homicide himself, a temporary partner, and the two of them take over just as I leave town."

"We get it," Lauren said.

Collins pushed a piece of pie crust around on his dessert plate.

"Hold up," Lauren said. "Before you go on, let me tell you this. We fucked up the Schecter murder investigation. I tell you this cop to cop. We blew it. Some of it was just the circumstances, just like you going on vacation. And some of it was we just simply blew it. The lead was my boss, Marybeth Duffy. She knows she blew it, and admits it, and feels like shit because of it. And I love her to death and would still follow her anywhere, she's the best cop I know or ever met, and wouldn't want to work for any other boss, not ever. But all that said, she had a bad day and she fucked up, that's all. We all have bad days, and we have to move on. Who knows, maybe they even make us better. So, if you want to tell us your people fucked up, you're in safe company."

Collins grinned. "Not just my people. Me, too. I was lead. Some of it is on me."

"Fair enough," Lauren said. "Tell it."

"I'm not sure how to start. I don't want to say the wrong thing, or say it the wrong way, and I don't want to offend anybody. But I'm just a street cop from Bakersfield, okay? I'm not a big city guy. There's a lot of stuff I don't know shit from shinola about. My wife will tell you, I'm not the most enlightened guy in the world. I am who I am, that's all. So what I'm saying is, I don't know anything about this transgender thing. What I know about the gays and the lesbians might just fill a good-sized coffee cup, but what I know about the trans thing wouldn't fill a tenth of a shotglass. I mean, I see the stuff on television, you know, sex change operations and men becoming women and women becoming men, and … how can I say this? … it's all just, like, noise. I mean, I hear it, I see it, but I just have no idea what they're talking about. Bruce Jenner, or whatever she calls herself now. That Ru-Paul guy. Even down at the Casa, those drag queens. So maybe what I'm telling you is, when we found out about Sweeney, well, I just plain didn't know what to do with it. Was he a man? Was he a woman? He was a man who had a baby? He was a lesbian who fucked a guy? A guy got knocked up? I mean, frankly, and I hope I'm not offending anybody, but I just plain didn't know what to do with it. Meaning him, or her, or whatever. You get what I'm saying? Am I wrong-footing here?"

"You're doing okay," Lauren said quietly. "No one says it isn't complicated."

"I hesitate to ask … do either of you know about this stuff? The tranny thing? Transgender, transman, whatever you call it?"

"We know some," Carmen said. "We know a few people who are transgender." Still, she didn't want to tell Collins that she actually knew Max, and didn't like him, and hadn't, from Day One. It might have seemed like validating an anti-trans prejudice. How to explain coming home and finding the kitchen messed up and not cleaned up after dinner? How to explain Max's small-town insecurities and boorish behavior the night they took Jenny out to dinner? How to explain her anger at finding Max's hypodermic needle on the bathroom sink, and thinking it was heroin instead of testosterone, and then not really caring which one it was, considering that either one would have fucked up Max and made her/him treat Jenny like shit? It was a lot of work for Carmen to be able to say it's okay to not like a transgender person. To not like Max. It wasn't because the person was transgender. It was because the person was an asshole who happened to be transgender. It was because she agreed with Shane that night at the fundraiser when Shane had told Max, "If you hurt Jenny I'll cut your tits off myself."

"What you're saying is, when you were told Max was transgendered, you didn't know exactly how to proceed."

"Yes," Collins said. "I mean, we categorize people all the time. Dead prostitute, you know what to do, who to look for – the pimp. Dead housewife? Piece of cake, sweat the hubby. Dead husband? Same thing, sweat the wife. Dead girlfriend? Dead boss? Dead gangbanger, dead liquor store owner, dead gambler, dead rich guy? Even a dead cop. Maybe especially a dead cop. But those categories, those homicides, you get the call-out and pretty much you know what to do almost from the moment you get to the crime scene. But a dead tranny lying by the side of the road at 3 a.m., full of drugs and booze? Yeah, we fucked up. I tell myself, it wasn't because he was trans whatever. I tell myself it was because I just didn't know what to do next. Who to talk to, who to look at, beyond the obvious landlord and job supervisor. And the forensics dribbles in over two weeks and then I go on vacation, and my partner and his temp partner take over, and I admit, I said to myself, thank god, because I don't want this case and I don't know what I'm doing, and the next three weeks it's all their problem and not mine. And no, I don't feel good about that, but there it is. I was happy to get the case off my hands."

"So what happened next?"

"The coroner releases the body finally, and there's a funeral. The sister comes in from someplace in Illinois and the ex-boyfriend who knocked her up, he comes in from LA, and when they hold some sort of service at the funeral home I am literally at home packing my bags for Hawaii and I am on leave and couldn't care less, Baxter and Gomez have the case. I get back three weeks later, the case is colder than a frosty Coors light. They interview the ex-boyfriend, he says he knows nothing, gives them an alibi where he was the night Sweeney got run down, and guess what, home alone in bed asleep, went to work the next morning. The sister from Illinois hasn't spoken to Sweeney in years, they don't get along, the sister isn't crazy about gay people in general but tolerated Sweeney being a lesbian, but the tranny thing, well, that was some kind of deal-breaker for her. Bitches about the cost of flying out to Bakersfield. Tells the boyfriend you pay for the fucking funeral, the boyfriend says no fucking way, the funeral home throws them both out on the street, cops come, break up the catfight but nobody wants to press charges, especially the funeral home, because the last thing they want is a newspaper story about a riot at a tranny funeral. Jesus Christ. Three, four days later I'm on a tour of Pearl Harbor, we go out to the _Arizona_ , sunk in the harbor, you know? I get a text from Baxter, guess what, we just found out the tranny had a baby that died from SIDS in a foster home. I text him back, go fucking check it out and don't text me anything until I get back, with one of those smiley emo-whatchamacallit things. There's one with the middle finger raised. So, short story long, that's what happened. We didn't know in a timely fashion what we had, we didn't really know what to do, and like people say, it fell through the cracks because we let it do exactly that. We never learned anything about the Schecter thing, and we never contacted anybody in LA because we didn't know anything about LA or Sweeney's life there. We had an LA ex-boyfriend and some weird stuff about a baby. Baxter and Gomez looked at it, but there was nothing. My mistake was I let it ride, I accepted their work, because that was the easiest thing to do. And then, you know, another case comes along, and another, and another, and the file goes into a filing cabinet, and its sits there untouched for who-fucking-knows forever. Then you called."

Collins signaled to the waiter for more coffee.

"Let me ask you," Collins finally said. "Sweeney was a guy, sort of, but had a baby. How does that work? In my whole life, I never heard of such a thing."

"Well, it sort of works like this," Carmen said. "One reason you never heard of it is because it's pretty rare, but it has happened, and usually on purpose. Usually when a woman is transitioning she starts taking testosterone, and Max was, starting in January or February 2006. Apparently it was black market hormones. Because she couldn't afford to go to a legitimate doctor—"

"Who's your source on this?" Collins asked.

"Shane and Alice."

"Who?"

"Shane McCutcheon and Alice Pieszecki. They're in your paperwork we gave you. Alice is the one in jail on what we believe is the false confession. McCutcheon was Schecter's girlfriend at the time of her murder. They both had known Max from the time Max came out to LA in 2005."

Lauren said nothing, least of all that Carmen knew this information firsthand.

"Okay," Collins said. "Go on."

"The testosterone treatments really screwed up Max's emotions. He would go into rages and was often out-of-control. He wanted to get what's called top surgery, that's basically when a surgeon removes the breasts. It's a mastectomy without the cancer. Max wanted it but couldn't afford it, any more than he could afford proper testosterone therapy. He and Schecter were in a relationship but it broke up, in part because he was treating her badly, she was treating him badly, and she cheated on him with a woman she met in Canada. He kind of cheated on her, too, with a gay guy they met briefly where they hung out. Jenny walked in on him giving the guy a BJ, but Jenny said go ahead, she didn't give a damn. A year or two later Max had a relationship with a woman who didn't know Max was a woman, too; he had a mustache and was pretty masculine, but he still had a vagina and uterus. That relationship went badly, too, when she finally found out. So a year or two later, Max met this guy Tom, and apparently got pregnant by him unintentionally, somewhere around September or October 2008. They fought a lot, in part about Max deciding to keep the baby and it may have been too late to have an abortion anyway. They actually had a baby shower for him, which I'm told didn't go well. They finally split in February 2009, and Schecter had a lot to do with it. Apparently the boyfriend hated Schecter and vice versa. In her interview after the murder Max said Jenny might have been responsible for the break-up. Anyway, about a month later was the going-away party where Schecter was murdered. Max was there, and was maybe five to six months pregnant at the time. It seems that Schecter was the only one keeping Max tied to the group, and after Schecter's funeral Max pulled up stakes and disappeared, so far as any of the group knew. It tells you something that none of them appears to have kept in touch, or asked about the birth of the baby. They were all pretty shook up by Jenny's murder and dispersed somewhat anyway. Two of them moved to New York, Pieszecki confessed, falsely, we believe, and went to jail. McCutcheon went off the deep end into booze and drugs for a couple months, that's how she mourns, before she got her shit back together and managed to get back on track. Helena Peabody was filthy rich and had two kids in Europe she went off to visit. That left just Kit Porter, who was the owner of the place they all hung out, and she's still there."

"So what happened to Sweeney before she moved to Bakersfield, do you know?"

"We've learned she went to a woman's shelter in San Francisco, and they helped get her through the pregnancy and delivery. The baby had health issues right from the start, and the suspicion is being on testosterone may have been the cause. There's not much in the medical literature on it, but what little there is says testosterone treatment in transgenders might cause birth defects. Medically, the cause doesn't matter, but psychologically it might have had an effect on Max, we don't know. What the record shows is he turned the baby over to the city which put it in foster care, and four months later it died of SIDS, that sudden infant death syndrome when it just stops breathing. The record is sketchy for a while, but it appears Max was living in a shelter, and had a couple of arrests for drunk and disorderly, getting into fights in bars, and they finally kicked her out of the shelter. The next two months go dark, and then she turns up relatively clean and sober in Bakersfield and gets the job at the computer repair shop. Somewhere along the line she finally got the top surgery, but we don't know where or when, or how she paid for it."

"Think that's important or relevant?"

Carmen shrugged. "We have no idea. What I really want to know is how she paid for it."

"Why?"

Carmen shrugged. "Just a feeling. Max never had any money, other than his salary, and my guess is working in a mom-and-op computer repair place isn't the same as some high-tech Silicon Valley job. I think what I'm most worried about is this: Did Max sell the baby? I guess he could sell a kidney or something, but let's look at what we know. Max was pregnant, wanted or needed money, didn't want the baby, the father really, really didn't want the baby. We know in hindsight he wanted the top surgery, because he went and had it done. Here's what I wonder: What would you do if you bought a black market baby and then you discovered it had birth defects and after a few months it dies of SIDS? Notwithstanding the grieving, do you want to get your money back? Are you really pissed, or just grieving? Do you feel cheated, or lied to? Suppose during the adoption process you discover the birth mother never mentioned testosterone treatments or anything else? The adopting parents may never have met Max, they may have had no truthful information beforehand. Maybe they were told the mother was in great health and blah blah, and so was the baby. Then after the baby dies they somehow find out the truth. Maybe from the baby's autopsy."

"You're saying these are motives for murder," Collins said.

"I'm just thinking out loud," Carmen said.

"Yeah, but you're really good at it," Lauren said. "Unfortunately."

"Why unfortunately?"

"Because now we have more suspects we have to track down. One is Tom, the pissed-off ex. And then, as you said, there's the whole baby thing. And in a way, it only helps us for fifty percent of the two murders. This line of questioning may advance solving Max's murder, but it does nothing for Schecter, and it means we have two different killers, not the same killer for both."

Carmen couldn't help it; she broke into a giant yawn that she covered with both hands. "Sorry, but I am physically, mentally and gastronomically exhausted. Can we pick up tomorrow? Lauren, where are we bunking down for the night?"

"You can probably get rooms here at the Padre," Collins said, "but if you're on the city dime we've got all the usual chains, Days Inn, Motel 6, Red Roof, and some decent mom-and-pops I can recommend."

Lauren looked at Carmen.

"It's up to you, boss lady," Carmen said, "but as far as I'm concerned the shortest distance between two points is from here to the front desk to upstairs. With any luck, I can be in bed and sound asleep in ten minutes."

"Sounds like a plan," Lauren said.

They settled up the bill with the waiter and Collins came with them to the front desk to make sure there were two vacancies that included the Kern County Sheriff's Department courtesy discounts. While they waited they agreed they had covered everything they needed to, and Lauren thanked Collins for his time and the copies. They agreed to keep in touch. Then he said goodnight and walked the few blocks to his car. Carmen and Lauren got their overnight bags from Lauren's car and went back to the hotel lobby and went up to their rooms.

Neither one said anything, but they both knew they were thinking the same thoughts. Instead of two rooms we could use just one. Instead of single beds, one nice, big comfortable double bed might be nice … except we need the proper paperwork for the expense forms and reporting. So two rooms, no matter who sleeps where. I wish I weren't so fucking tired, Carmen thought. I wish I weren't so fucking tired, Lauren thought.

Should I make a move? How would she react? Is this even a good idea? There's no question I'm attracted. She's been giving me the right signals. I wonder if ... you know … if she's good in bed. If we did … I need a shower first. I'm just so fucking tired, and the wine didn't help. I bet Shane thinks I'm going to fuck Lauren. I bet McCutcheon thinks I'm going to fuck Carmen. I wonder if Collins has enough gaydar to know we're lesbians? Probably not. This is a terrible idea, us sleeping together, right in the middle of an investigation of two murders. If anybody found out we'd be in deep shit. This investigation, it's serious business. Let's not fuck it up with sex. I bet she's a good kisser. I wonder if she gives good head. I could really use a couple of good orgasms. It's been a while.

They got off the elevator. "Seven o'clock tomorrow morning?" Lauren asked.

"Ohhhhh," Carmen moaned.

"Okay, eight o'clock," Lauren laughed. They opened the doors to their rooms.

"Good night," Lauren said.

"Good night," Carmen said.

* * *

Twenty minutes later there was a quiet knock on the door.


	16. The Morning After

The next morning they were quiet with each other. When Lauren was ready she zipped up her overnight bag and went out into the hallway, closing the door to her hotel room behind her. She turned and saw Carmen sitting on an upholstered bench by the elevator bank, with her overnight bag, ready to go. “Been waiting long?”

“No, just got here.”

“Want breakfast?” Lauren pushed the elevator down button as Carmen stood up.

“That’s your call, whatever you want. But I DO need my morning coffee.”

“Me, too.”

“They have that coffee shop on the ground floor,” Carmen said as they got into the elevator. “We can get coffee and something to go.”

“That’s fine with me,” Lauren said. “It’s called the Farmacy Café.”

But when they went in and looked at the menu, Carmen changed her mind. “Let’s eat here,” she said. “I gotta try that steak-and-egg burrito. It’s not something I want to eat in your car.”

“The egg white frittata has my name all over it,” Lauren said.

They ate at one of the tiny tables out by the sidewalk in front of the café and the hotel.

“Anxious to get home, or just anxious to get out of Bakersfield?” Lauren asked.

“Both. I have no great feelings for the city one way or the other, but I can tell you this, I sure don’t like Highway 99 heading up to the Central Valley.”

“The crime scene.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess there’s cops who will tell you that you get used to it. Scene of the crime, evidence, gory crime scene photos, stomach-turning autopsy reports. I’m not one of those cops.”

“No. But Collins is.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“You seemed to get along with him well. I was worried he’d have an attitude because we’re women and from LA. Among other things he probably might not approve of if he knew about them.”

“The secret is he and I are both county sheriff’s department detectives. I’m LASD, not LAPD, so he doesn’t associate me with LA the city, or Hollywood, or LaLaLand, or whatever he might want to call it. He may not realize West Hollywood is a highly gay, tiny little municipality located smack dab in the middle of the city. He’s Kern County, I’m LA County, that’s all he knows, so I get a pass. And he thinks the same about you. You’re a county cop trainee, as far as he knows. He approves of that.”

“I don’t think he approves of Max being trans. It threw him for a loop.”

Lauren wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Max being trans threw your entire group for a loop. You maybe most of all.”

Carmen sipped her coffee. “Maybe. I still think for me it was that I just plain didn’t like Max even when he was Moira. I didn’t care that he was hyper butch. I think it was cultural, and, well, personal. Max had this big chip on his shoulder because he was a small-town hick from the sticks, and he fell in with a bunch of mostly upscale lipstick lesbians, not only sophisticated big city girls, but LA and Hollywood types at that. Two or three of them full-fledged divas. It didn’t matter he was surrounded by lesbians, and if he had any expectations that he’d find a warm, safe, welcoming reception in the bosom of a bunch of loving, supportive dykes, he was wrong about that. He got off on the wrong foot with me in the first ten minutes he was in town, and he got off on the wrong foot with everybody else the second night in town when we all took him and Jenny out to dinner. He insulted us and then left to go sulk and didn’t come home all night.”

“Then it just got worse. He was a slob around the house. It may have started out as Jenny and Tim’s place, and then Jenny and Shane’s place, but it became Shane’s and MY place. It was Max who was making a mess of _my_ home, Max was an uninvited guest, invading my space and fouling up MY nest that I’d worked hard to create. Max’s gender crisis had nothing to do with any of it.”

Lauren sipped her coffee and looked over the brim of her cup at her. “You’ve been waiting a long time to get that off your chest.”

They were half an hour down the road before anyone said anything.

“I have a question,” Carmen finally said.

Lauren looked over. Because it was an unmarked county police cruiser, there was no way Lauren would be allowed to let Carmen drive, although she had offered to take turns. “Shoot,” Lauren said.

“Do most homicide investigations go like this? I had the idea, maybe from TV and movies, and so maybe it’s bullshit. But I had the idea that you started off with a whole bunch of suspects, and narrowed them down to one, the person who actually did it. But our investigation seems to be going the opposite way. We started off with only one suspect, Alice, who confessed, and then Shane as the real primary suspect. And the more we look into it, the more we turn up new suspects. Niki, for sure, and/or one of her posse. Maybe the guys at the studio. Maybe Tina. Maybe Max. And there’s always Rollo Thomassi, our unsub. It’s getting more complicated, not less. Everything’s bass ackwards.”

“Yes, you’re entirely correct. That’s how it’s going. Does that discourage you in some way?”

“No. It’s just not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Not this.”

They drove for twenty minutes in silence.

“Lauren?” Carmen asked.

Lauren looked over and could see the wheels turning inside Carmen’s brain.

“Yes, Detective Morales?”

“Where is Max’s laptop?”

Now the wheels were turning in Lauren’s brain, too.

“You know, Detective Morales, that is one damn good question. Call Collins and ask him.”

She did, talked to him, said thanks and hung up. “He says he doesn’t know anything about any laptop. They never found one. But now he’s thinking about it, too.”

“Call Max’s work. The name and phone number are in the folder.”

Carmen searched through the manila folder until she found it. “Melvin K. Hildebrand, Fast Fix Golden State Computers.” She dialed it on her cell.

“May I speak to Mr. Hildebrand, please? Thanks.” When he came on the line, Carmen said, “Mr. Hildebrand, this is Detective Lauren Hancock, LA Sheriff’s Office. Yes, we talked a few days ago, about Max Sweeney. I’ve got a question that I think I know the answer to, but I have to ask it anyway, just to make sure. Do you know if Max had a laptop of any kind, and if so, is there any chance he left it at your shop, or in some way you might know what may have become of it? Uh-huh… uh huh … yes, that’s pretty much what we suspected. Okay, thanks for your time.” She hung up.

“Impersonating a police officer is a felony,” Lauren said.

“So is claiming to be Detective Morales from the LASD. I figured I had a choice of which lie to tell.”

“He doesn’t know anything about any laptop.”

“Nope. He said Max had no need of a personal one at work, since they had all the computer stuff anybody would ever need. He said he guessed Max had a computer of some sort at home, but he didn’t know anything about it. He said after Max died the only personal items they found at work were a coffee cup that said Yellowstone Park and a few protein bars.”

“Okay, humor me. Is there any chance in the world that Max didn’t own a computer, and probably a laptop?”

“Somewhere around zero point zero zero zero chance,” Carmen said. “Max was an IT guy. I know for a fact he owned a laptop back when he lived with Jenny and Shane and me. He e-mailed and surfed the Internet and did everything all the rest of us do. And being Max and being difficult, he didn’t like Apple or Windows, he messed around with something called Ubuntu, one of those open source systems, and he was always messing with it. So where is it?”

“Exactly, my dear Watson,” Lauren said. “Dead body by the side of the road, but no cellphone. Room at a boarding house, but no laptop or cellphone there.”

“Theoretically they could be in his car, but there is no car. But I don’t think that’s the answer.”

“No. The killer took them. So let’s think about that for a moment.”

They rode for a mile.

“Okay, I’m done thinking,” Carmen said. “What have you got?”

“Simplest explanation: A simple burglary of Max’s apartment.”

“No freaking way.”

“Correct answer. No freaking way. You don’t force somebody to drink booze and take pills and set up a fake suicide and then run them down at 3 in the morning, all just to cover up a cellphone jacking. And it wasn’t the landlord, because the first he knew Max was dead was when the detectives came to search the apartment. So what else have you got, Grasshopper?”

“Why do you take the laptop? Because there’s something in it. Something that might help police identify you, if it was found and examined.”

“Right. And what would that be?”

Carmen thought. “Well, first, e-mails. To and from the killer, only Max didn’t know the recipient was going to kill him.”

“And the cellphone?”

“Easy. Max and the killer talked on the phone. Probably to set up the meeting that night. Plus who knows what earlier phone calls.”

“Max and the killer have a history of communication, and the cellphone and laptop documented it. So they had to be eliminated, too, along with Max himself,” Lauren said. “Now, take the next step.”

Carmen thought. “Since we don’t have the phone, we get the phone records.”

“Good. That takes a warrant. I’ll take care of it when we get back. Next?”

“There was more in his laptop than just who he e-mailed. First, there’s the content of the e-mails. And there’s other stuff.”

“Correct. But what’s your evidence for that theory? Because that’s all it is.”

“I know. But I just think there has to be more. Max’s murder – it’s not some simple carjacking or robbery, or even some kind of kill-the-trannies hate crime thing. There’s more. There’s something else.”

“I agree, although like you, without evidence, just a feeling. But?”

“But? There’s a but? Okay, there’s a but. Let me think about it.”

They rode for two miles.

“Okay, I need a hint, my honorable sensei.”

“Besides all the gender business, what else separated Max from all the rest of you? The one other thing that makes him/her different?”

Carmen worked on it. “It’s not where we came from, not background. Jenny’s from the same region, Illinois, Shane’s from Texas, I’m from the barrio, Tina’s from Arizona, Bette’s bi-racial, Kit is black, Alice is Irish Catholic/Polish, Helena’s filthy rich. Shit, we’re like a World War II movie, the perfectly distributed cross-section of America. All we need is a Brooklyn Jew and a bunch of penises. We don’t even have orientation in common.”

“No. But you do have something.”

“Give me a hint.”

“Watergate.”

“Watergate?”

“Come on, you’re a movie buff. And we already went over this.”

“Follow the money.”

“Bingo.”

“Max had no money.”

“Double bingo.”

“Ahh, I see. I have two incomes, I’m comfortable. Shane’s fallen into a money-making machine, and she had some inheritance from Harvey. Alice always made good money, she was comfortable. Tina and Bette made very good money, and Helena goes without saying. Kit has _The Planet_. Niki’s a movie star, that goes without saying. Max was the only one struggling with income, and it seems clear she was one small paycheck away from poverty. None of the rest of us were.”

“Correct again, Grasshopper. Engage pursuit mode.”

“Pursuit mode? Jesus. Okay, follow the money. Max had none, except his small paycheck. He got nothing whatsoever from Jenny’s probate and estate. Yet somewhere along the way he found enough money to get his top surgery. I don’t know off the top of my head what that costs, but it’s gotta be five or ten thousand, minimum.”

“Do you know anything about black market top surgery? Max was doing black market testosterone shots for his transition, according to the testimony in all the paperwork I’ve found. And you said so.”

“Yes, he was,” Carmen said. “It being black market was one of the things I once argued with him about. It was much less about the legality than it was about the safety aspect, that he was basically self-medicating and didn’t know shit about what he was doing. And Jenny was helping and enabling, and that was just the blind leading the blind. Then regarding the money, we held a fundraiser for his top surgery, and he went batshit crazy because we didn’t raise enough. That was when Shane threatened to cut his tits off if he hurt Jenny.”

“How much did you raise?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Jenny told me around thirty-five, thirty-seven hundred. But it wasn’t enough, by a long shot, so he didn’t get it done, and there was no way to give it back.”

“So how did Max find enough money to get it done in the last year or so?”

Carmen thought, but it didn’t take her long. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yes?”

“The baby.”

“Yep.”

“He sold it on the black market. And used the money for his top surgery.”

“We can’t prove that right now, but give me a few days. Keep going.”

“The baby died. Possibly because Max had the testosterone treatments, then stopped them, but never should have gotten pregnant or carried the baby to term.”

“Argumentative, but I’ll accept it. Keep going.”

“The adoptive parents are pissed. They discover Max’s medical history. The baby’s autopsy turns up something. The parents feel cheated. They want their money back.”

“And?”

“And all this is in e-mails on Max’s laptop. The letters from the parents. Maybe there’s lawyers involved. Stuff about the birth. Stuff about the black market adoption. Maybe threats. We don’t know who the black market parents are. If they are black market, maybe there’s a reason they couldn’t go to police or use the courts.”

“And?”

“And our list of suspects keeps growing and growing. We may have to hire some more new, completely untrained and inexperienced lesbians to handle the workload.”

“Do they have to be lesbians?”

“No, not necessarily. Bi would be okay, and even a little butch, but not too butch.”

“Glad we got that straightened out.”

“I’m a detail-oriented gal.”

“And a list-maker, according to Shane.”

“Yes, that’s high on my list of virtues and talents. Where were we?”

“Max’s missing laptop and Rollo Thomassi, who took it.”

“It’s been destroyed, along with Max’s car and cell phone. We’re never going to see them again.”

“Yes. And then, no.”

They rode in silence for a while.

“You know, we have a lot of phone calls we can make. I’ve got Bluetooth, we can put them on speaker. It’s almost 10 a.m., everyone will be awake except Shane. We can call her last.”

“Okay, make me a list. I’ll dial, you drive.”

“Marybeth. Tina or Bette in New York. I’d really like to talk to Alice up at Humboldt, and we’ll need to go up there and actually see her, talk in person. There’s too much to discuss with her over the phone, and to do that I’ll need to talk to the warden’s office, and her lawyer. But we can give her a short summary of what we’ve learned. The funeral home that handled Max, to get his sister’s contact information in Illinois.”

“What can she tell us?” Carmen asked.

“Probably not much. But when she came out here she may not have been told Max was murdered, not killed accidentally. I don’t think Collins may have known, and he was leaving town on vacation. So we need to tell her, and once she’s had a chance to digest it, she may remember something that helps. Or not, but we need to ask.”

“Okay.”

“Then Helena and Kit. Then Shane.”

Carmen didn’t say anything.

“What’s wrong?” Lauren asked.

“The single biggest thing Jenny and Max’s murders have in common is Shane. But I can’t make the puzzle pieces fit.”

“That’s because they don’t. Okay, so let’s just say Shane pushed Jenny off the deck and then rolled her into the pool, and then, as you suggested once, went into some extreme denial mode. Fine. But then a year later for some reason locates Max in fucking Bakersfield, drives out here, forces her to drink most of a bottle of vodka and swallow some oxy, then runs her down, takes her Subaru out into the boonies somewhere, abandons it in an arroyo or some avocado orchard or a junkyard, done it so well no one has found it since, makes her way back to Gaytown, and nobody the wiser. That about right?”

“Uhhh, okay, it was a bad idea,” Carmen said.

“Beg to disagree,” Lauren said. “It was a bat-shit crazy idea. A lunatic idea. Oh, the first half wasn’t too, too, awful bad, but the second part? One more idea like that and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for your resignation from the Nancy Drew Girl Detectives League.”

“So I’m on probation?”

“Double secret probation,” Lauren said.

“You’re a tough boss,” Carmen said. “Tough but fair.”

"Have I happened to mention that I'm a very, very thorough investigator?" Lauren asked. "I am, you know."

"Uh, okay," Carmen said, knowing this was going someplace.

"You know what due diligence is?"

"Sure. It's when you investigate all the details, even the little ones that you already know, or think you know, or think will be useless, because that's in the job description. Check A, B, C, D and E, even if you now C, D and E are nothing."

"Right. I'm pretty good at due diligence."

"I never doubted it for a moment, Sherlock Hancock. You want to clue me where this is going?"

"Back to Follow the Money," Lauren said. "Remember? We’re getting court orders to look at Jenny and Niki's bank accounts. Other people, too."

"Yes? And?"

"I did my due diligence on Shane, got a look at her bank records, income, expenditures, stock portfolio, yadda yadda, the whole financial picture."

"And?"

"And like she told me, she's a forty percent partner in Shane's Sugar Shack, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sweet Things Enterprises, Incorporated."

And then Carmen knew where this was going. She smiled to herself.

"Sweet Things Enterprises, as I think you may already know, is a limited liability corporation, being Shane's business partnership with Chase. And it is one of the various subsidiaries of Chase-La Jolla Holding Group, Inc., which is Chase's business empire, not just the Sugar Shacks, but all his other stuff not connected to Shane. He's got real estate, beauty salons, a couple of gyms, a health spa, and so on."

"He's a very talented guy," Carmen said.

"Yep. And seems to be pretty honest, too. No major law suits, no scandals, no observable hanky-panky."

"Glad to hear it."

"I took a look at Sweet Things Enterprises," Lauren said. "Shane told me a couple weeks ago she and Chase were sixty-forty partners, Chase being the sixty and her the forty. She said she put in her settlement money from the arson fire at Wax, and money she'd inherited from Harvey. I'm sure she was telling me the truth as she believed it. But the fact is, she's partly wrong. Shane’s Sugar Shack is sixty-forty, but Sweet Things Enterprises isn't. It includes Shane and Chase, but Chase has one other investor. It's really a fifty-forty-ten partnership."

"I'm fascinated beyond measure," Carmen said, looking out the window, coy and bored at the same time. “That secret partner sounds ominous. I mean, maybe you should investigate who they are. They could be the Russian mob, or, like, a Mexican cartel or something.”

"My first thought was some bad-ass Mexicans, too, so I got a copy of the financial filings and start-up corporate papers just last night, by e-mail, and read them this morning before we left the hotel," Lauren said. "That's how I learned there was a ten percent partner in Sweet Things but not Sugar Shacks. It's something called SPC1 Investment Group."

"How about that."

"S, P, C, One. Investment Group. S, P, C, One."

"An investment group," Carmen said. "Sounds like a bunch of doctors and dentists and chiropractors Chase knows. Probably gay doctors and dentists and lawyers investing their money."

"Funny thing, the casual observer might come to that conclusion."

"But not you."

"No, not me. S, P, C, One. Spicy One. The Spicy One. The Spicy One Investment Group. To me it sounds like it's where Spicy One, whatever he, she or it happens to be, invests his or her or its or their money. Or some of it, anyway."

"And you are going to dig into the records to find out who SPC1 Investment group is."

"Nah, don't have to. It’s bad-ass Mexicans, all right. I'm sure you know that in Hollywood people who invest in movies are called 'angels.' Well, it appears Chase and Shane have an angel backing their company. According to the records, SPC1 put up the start-up money for Shane’s Sugar Shacks. A silent partner, as you might call it. So silent, in fact, that I bet Shane doesn't even know about it. For one thing, at first I couldn’t figure out why there was this one corporate level between Sugar Shacks and Chase’s holding company. What purpose did this intermediate level serve? And then I figured out why. I'm willing to bet my Glock and my shield right now that whenever Shane signed whatever paperwork she had to sign to partner up with Chase that she either never read the fine print, that Chase gave her some bullshit fairy tale about investors and corporate subsidiary structures, blah blah blah, and Shane never picked up on it. I’m willing to bet Shane has no idea that Sweet Things Enterprises and the bad-ass Mexicans even exist."

"Could be," Carmen said. "I've heard Shane was pretty messed up about Jenny's death. And then when they started the project she threw herself into the work. Paperwork and details like that were never her strong suit anyway."

"You know her better than I do," Lauren said. "I have a theory about all this."

"Oh my goodness," Carmen said.

"Here's my theory. Shane told me Chase called her up one day with this idea for the Sugar Shack, explained it to her, talked her into it. But I don't think it was Chase's idea at all. I think someone else suggested it to him. Somebody who knew Shane was likely to crash and burn, or already had. Somebody who knew Shane needed help. Somebody who knew the Sugar Shack thing was right down Shane's alley, something she'd be good at. And as Chase himself said to her, it would help Shane pull her head out of her own ass."

"Intriguing," Carmen said. “Those bad-ass Mexicans can be tricky.”

"And then this mystery person sold the deal to Chase. I think here's what the mystery person said. 'Tell you what, Chase. I know this sounds like a high-risk plan, but I believe in this idea so strongly that here's thirty thousand dollars of my own money to invest in it. You can use it for the start-up money, whatever seed money you may need, so there's no risk to you up front. And all I want is to be a secret, silent partner with ten percent of the Sugar Shacks. Just promise me don't ever tell Shane.' That's what I think the S, P, C, One investor said. And then Chase says, well, let’s put in an intermediate layer and call it Sweet Things Enterprises. That’s how we’ll hide the start-up money for Shane’s Sugar Shacks, one layer up. So I think Shane gets true, honest and legal financial paperwork and tax stuff, income, whatever, from Shane’s Sugar Shack, and it shows a clear sixty-forty split. But Shane never sees any paperwork from Sweet Things, because it’s none of her business, any more than Chase-La Jolla is any of her business. So Shane never sees that the bad-ass Mexicans gets ten percent but only out of Chase’s share, not Shane’s. It’s my guess Sweet Things Enterprises exists for only one purpose. To hide that bad-ass Mexican investment partner, whoever he, she, it, or they is or are."

“Hesheitthey. I like that. It sounds like one of those new gender-neutral pronouns politically correct people try to come up with.”

There was silence for a minute. "So anyway, that's my theory, pronoun notwithstanding." Lauren said. "Care to comment on it?"

"No, I don't think so," Carmen said.

"I figured as much.'"

“It all sounds wildly speculative and unbelievable,” Carmen said and got out her cell phone. “I better get started on those phone calls.”


	17. Strange Fruit

They picked up Shane at Alice’s apartment – Shane’s apartment, for the foreseeable future – and drove to _The Planet_ for lunch. Shane was ready and waiting for them, and reasonably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Her overnight guest, whose name was Jo or maybe Joan, Joni or Josie, something like that, had left just an hour earlier. Over the years Shane had relaxed her rules against overnighters, although she was still quite selective over who could stay and who had to get dressed and go home. Jo/Joan/Joni/Josie made the cut because she was a Sugar Shack customer who needed all her body hair removed because she was a swimmer at UCLA. That, and she was almost as aquatic as Shane, possessor of the dominant Esther Williams sex gene.

One upside was that Shane didn’t need to take a morning shower to get ready for her day. Shower sex is multitasking. And although water is scarce in California, that’s no reason to tolerate a cramped shower stall. In West Hollywood and other very gay or very upscale neighborhoods showers stalls were often capacious, capable of washing two, three, even four people at a time under all sorts of rainforest and side-spray features a kiddie’s waterpark would envy. A shower stall could be almost as multifunctional as a high school gymnasium. Shane and Jo/Joan//Joni/Josie had spent nearly two hours in the shower stall, during which time a number of orgasms were achieved in several interesting ways. That still left plenty of time for Shane to drink her first cup of morning coffee by herself, naked and water-wrinkled, at her kitchen table, and get dressed at her leisure in time for lunch.

As she sipped her K-cupped Green Mountain Morning Blend she pondered the question of Carmen and Lauren’s overnighter to the Central Valley. Shane had not forgotten the time Carmen had gone out-of-town on an overnighter to the edge of the desert, and had a revenge-fuck affair with a girl name Robin, the San Diego school teacher Carmen had continued to be involved with – sporadically and unhappily, so Carmen claimed – over the years. If Shane loved to fuck in water, Carmen tended to like to fuck in hot, dry desert air (or, truthfully, anywhere else). This time she was in the company of a woman Shane herself had water-fucked a decade ago, a woman who had only gotten prettier and more assured, and certainly more experienced, since then. It was Alice who could always tell when someone just had sex. Where was Alice now, when Shane could have used her spooky talent? Maybe having prison sex, hopefully consensual. Prison sex was one of the very, very few kinds of girl-girl sex Shane had never had, fingers crossed and knock on wood.

Kit was ringing up a customer’s lunch check and credit card at the cash register, and looked up when Carmen, Shane and Lauren came into _The Planet_. “Oh my lordy, look who’s in the house! The hottest, spiciest DJ west of the Rockies!” The restaurant was noisy and crowded, but half the heads in the room heard Kit and turned to stare at the woman Kit rushed to embrace. “Oh, darlin’, how long has it been? Two, three years?”

Carmen rarely blushed, but this was one of those times. “It’s so good to see you, too, Kit.”

“Give your mama a big hug,” Kit said, holding Carmen tight and then with one arm reaching out for Shane. “Hey, Shane, long time no see. What’s it been, six or seven days, right?”

“Five, I think,” Shane said, laughing and allowing herself to be pulled into a group clinch. “Chase and I were in last week –”

“Oh, my girls, my girls, my girls,” Kit said, rocking them both and then looking up and seeing Lauren standing near the door, quietly smiling and observing. “Hi, welcome to The Planet. I hear you’re with these two?”

“I am, indeed,” Lauren said, stepping forward as Kit released Shane so she could shake hands. “I’m Lauren Hancock. I’ve not only heard a lot about you, I’m a big fan. I still have your _Kit Porter’s Blues_ album, on vinyl, it’s always been one of my favorites. I get weak in the knees whenever I hear _Longing Too Long Tonight_.”

“That one paid for a lot of vodka tonics over the years,” Kit said. “I shoulda put the money into mutual funds, but I drank it up instead. Y’all here for business or pleasure?”

“Both, we want to eat, and we also need to talk to you if you can get free,” Carmen said.

“Sugar, the only things we got here for free are hugs and my good advice. Let me see what I can find.”

Kit surveyed the room. The lunch rush was coming to an end, but _The Planet_ was still filled to capacity. Every table was taken, and there were four other women by the door waiting for a table, and who had been there when Shane, Carmen and Lauren had come in. “Gonna be a few minutes wait,” Kit said. “No, I got a better idea, let’s go in the back. Follow me.” When she passed by the register, Kit said to one of the waitresses, “Colleen, when you get a second can you bring a couple menus and three set-ups into the back?”

“Sure thing,” Colleen said. “Hey, Shane.”

“Hey, Colleen,” Shane said.

“You been tantalizing them topless hula girls in Hawaii and Tahiti and Bora Bora, way I been hearing it,” Kit said over her shoulder to Carmen as they went into the kitchen.

Carmen laughed. “Oh, yeah, by the dozens,” she said. Shane and Lauren – and Kit, too, truth be told – had momentary visions of a bare-breasted Carmen in a skimpy grass hula skirt, surrounded by half a dozen naked Polynesian girls, swaying their hips slowly and gracefully as they danced by firelight on a romantic beach somewhere, the twin tattooed heads of Ixchel on Carmen’s upper buttocks grinning at each other across her tantalizing spine. Around the front, Carmen’s tattooed vines snaked to her hip bones before descending downward into her famous, scantily covered and juicy papaya. Shane bumped into a counter where a line chef was chopping romaine and arugula.

“Uh, sorry, sorry,” she said, returning to reality.

At the back of the kitchen. Kit had a cubby for her office, and near it was a small table she and the staff used for their own meals and sometimes as a work area. There were metal fold-up chairs against the wall and Kit pulled them out and set them up. “Sit down, sit down, I’ll be back in a minute, go ahead and order.”

When Colleen came back with the menus they ordered two Cobb salads and a Caesar salad with chicken for Shane. “This is good,” Carmen said. “because we can brief Shane and Kit at the same time.”

Between eating and taking turns talking, Kit having to get up and go deal with some restaurant business every now and then, and dozens of questions, it took most of the afternoon to bring Shane and Kit up to speed. They were also able to ask Kit about her recollection of the night Jenny was murdered, and probe the reasons why she was so angry with Jenny.

“Okay, let me start this way. I was never as close to Jenny as you two were, for the obvious reason I never had a thing with her,” Kit said, gesturing toward Carmen and Shane, “and I wasn’t as close to her as Bette and Tina, because they lived next door and saw her much more often than I did. I liked her well enough, I guess, but maybe my distance from her gave me a little better view, you know? A little distance, if that means anything. And hey, far be it from me to call somebody a diva, or criticize them for being difficult and even fucked up, because I wrote the book on that before Jenny ever got out of kindergarten, and you guys know that. But here it is. Jenny was a strange chick. I’m not saying anything you don’t know, right? And I watched her over what, six years or so, as she changed. I can’t truly say I watched her grow up, because I’m not sure she ever did. But she sure did change. That was one changeable gal, all right, know what I’m saying?”

“Carmen,” Kit said, taking a sip from a glass of iced tea, “back when you and Jenny were a thing, she was still kind of sweet and innocent, at least on the surface. I’m not sure I want to say this out loud, but you know me and my mouth, I’m gonna say what I think. Back then there were days when I thought you were the best thing could have happened to Jenny, to keep her feet on the floor. And then after that went south, there was you and Shane. And again I thought you were the best thing ever happened to Shane. By a country mile.”

Shane was looking at the floor. No one would make eye contact.

“Sorry, Shane, that’s not a dig at you. But baby, you fucked up, and I know you know you did, and I wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t know you already knew it. But anyway, back to Jenny. I often wondered if Carmen and Jenny breaking up started anything, because not too long after she’s sitting there cutting her legs the morning Angelica was born, remember? Okay, how could anybody forget? She went off the deep end, goes to that funny farm back in Illinois and comes back with Max. I mean, my precious baby Jesus, she goes from Carmen to Max. That’s like me dating Sidney Poitier and ditching him for O. J. Simpson and a drawer full of butcher knives.”

“Far as I’m concerned, Max was one box of Saltines away from being a bona fide, garden-variety cracker. I think the only reason she wasn’t racist or bigoted or whatever is because she started out lezzie her own self, and then trannie, so she sort of HAD to be liberal and tolerant, you know what I’m saying? But if she’d been born straight, you can’t tell me one day Max wouldn’t be a member of the KKK women’s auxiliary, bashing Muslims, praying for the salvation of queers and faggots in some backwoods church somewhere. I just couldn’t ever see Jenny getting together with Moira when they came back from Illinois. I mean, what the fuck was THAT about, you know? I can’t think of any two people had less in common, by temperament, or education or, hell, you name it. You know that song by my gal Billie Holiday, _Strange Fruit_? Well, Jenny and Moira, that was some strange fruit. Then all that transitioning stuff. I mean, on paper, I’m perfectly fine with that. I get it there’s people like that born into the world, and they can’t help what they are and they gotta do what they gotta do. I get it. But on the other hand…. ” She paused

“Yes?” Lauren finally said.

“On the other hand,” Kit said. “That Max was one fucked-up chick, and transitioning to a man didn’t unfuck her. And put her together with Jenny, well. I just never figured out what the attraction was, either way. Mostly, I just keep my distance and tried to keep my big mouth shut much as I could, given my close personal friend the bottle of gin, and my general open, sweet disposition.”

They laughed.

“Tell me about that last week or two,” Lauren said. “Jenny and the thing about Bette being unfaithful with Kelly.”

“Sheee-it,” Kit said, and sighed. “All right. First off, Bette ain’t really my half-sister, she’s my sister, period, and always has been. And as sisters, we’ve had plenty of fights over the years. Carmen, you have sisters, you know what that means. Lauren, you have sisters?”

“One. And I have brothers, which is even worse, so I know where you’re coming from.”

“Right. So bottom line what I’m saying is, Bette’s my sister and I love her to death, and Tina’s my sister-in-law, and Angelica ... well, that’s my family, and you don’t hurt my family. You hurt a member of my family, I’m coming after you. Period. End of sentence.”

“Understood,” Lauren said.

“So one day Jenny starts acting especially weird, even for her, hinting that at this party they had Bette was cheating on Tina. She wanted me to talk to Bette, get her to confess it to Tina. Well, to this day I can’t tell you which of those two parts was crazier. Not that Bette might have had an affair or cheated, because we all know over the years Bette had done exactly that. Ain’t none of my poor dead father’s two girls been saints, you know? But the time we’re talking about, I knew Bette and Tina were solid. And what Jenny wanted Bette to do was essentially split that family apart. I don’t know what the fuck was in her head, because it made no sense to me whatsoever, asking me to ask Bette to confess to Tina. I mean, what the fuck, you know? Confess? Shit, even if it was true, who the fuck was fucking Jenny Schecter to force Bette to confess to Tina something Jenny had no fucking business with?”

“And then Jenny begins to up the game. Says she’s got evidence. ‘What fucking evidence,’ I ask. She’s coy, but says she has it. ‘Go fuck yourself,’ I think to myself, but I don’t say it out loud. Finally, the bitch shows it to me, on her cellphone. Shot from you house, Shane, looking into Bette and Tina’s kitchen. Kelly got her back to the camera and the sink, and Bette seems to kneel down, you know, going down on her.”

“When was this conversation?” Lauren asked quietly.

“Oh, that night. Night of the party. Jenny and I were exploring the house, you know, Bette and Tina’s renovations, the new master bedroom and all. I hadn’t really had an opportunity to see them until that night, so we’re alone in the master bedroom, her and me. And that’s when she starts. ‘I have to talk to you, Kit.’ Real serious, you know, real intense, like she gets. I didn’t believe a word until she showed me the video on her phone.”

“Then what did you think?”

Kit sipped her tea and thought about it. “Okay, first thing was kind of shock. Saw it with my own eyes, Bette going down on Kelly right there in the kitchen. I was pretty pissed, thinking Bette had lied to me. So I’m kinda steaming on the inside, you know? But we go back to the media room and watch the farewell tape some more, and then next thing you know Alice comes into the room and starts babbling about Jenny, and then everything happened and I didn’t give it any more thought for, like a few days or more. Soon as they got cleared by the police Bette and Tina moved to New York. I wanted to talk to her about it, but face-to-face, I didn’t want to do it online with Skype or anything, and anyway it would have to be when Tina wasn’t around, and that almost never happened when we Skyped back and forth. First chance I got to talk to Bette was like a year later, when they came back here for a visit and Tina had some studio meetings to go to.”

“What happened?” Lauren pressed gently.

Kit shrugged. “I told her what I saw. Jenny showed me the thing on her phone. First we had talked about it Bette was furious, angry. This time she was like, I don’t know. Not don’t give a shit but maybe resigned, I guess. ‘Kit,’ she says, ‘I’m telling you the god’s honest truth. Kelly dropped a champagne glass and I was bending down to clean it up. Yes, I know what it might look like, but it isn’t true.’ And I just said okay, I’m sorry I brought it up. I apologize. And we never talked about it again.”

“Lauren,” Carmen said, “can we please fucking tell her?”

“Tell me what?”

“We’ve got good news for you. We had our forensics people look at that video. They blow it up, slow it down, measure angles and stuff like that. Turns out Bette was telling the truth. Yes, she was bending down, but the forensics people say Bette’s face had to be at least a foot or more away from Kelly’s crotch. There’s no way she was going down on her.”

Kit leaned forward and buried her face in her hands. They gave her a minute. Finally she sat back. “How come nobody told me?”

“Report only came back a few days ago.”

“A few days ago? You mean, they didn’t look at it way back then?”

“No.”

“No? What do you mean, no? Does Bette know?”

“No, not yet. We’re going to tell her when we talk to her.”

Kit looked from Lauren to Shane to Carmen, perplexed.

Carmen took the lead. “Kit, here’s what happened. Nobody looked at it because the entire investigation got put on hold when Alice confessed. If that hadn’t happened, then probably somewhere along the line somebody might have looked at it and cleared Bette of Jenny’s accusation. But even if they had, it wouldn’t have cleared Bette of the suspicion she was the one who killed Jenny. If Jenny believed the video to be true, it wouldn’t have mattered that Bette knew herself to be innocent. Jenny was essentially blackmailing her to confess something to Tina that would have broken up their family. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was false. So absolving Bette of the original accusation of cheating was irrelevant, it was still a motive for murder whether it was true or false. But see, proving it was false never came up.”

Kit shook her head slowly. “This is a lot of stuff I gotta think about.”

“It is,” Carmen said. “And there’s more, if you’re ready for it. The good news is it doesn’t have anything to do with you, Bette or Tina.”

“Oh, thank Christ,” Kit said. “Okay, I guess you better give it to me.”

“You know the stolen tapes of the movie _Lez Girls_ they found in Jenny and Shane’s attic? The one everybody thought Jenny stole?”

“Yeah, the missing movie. What about it?”

“Jenny didn’t steal it. Niki Stevens did.”

Kit looked at her blankly, then at Shane and Lauren. “Now you’re just fucking with me.”

Carmen laughed. “Yeah, well, guess what. I know, I know, I spent a couple years thinking she stole them, too. So did Shane, and just about everybody else, with a few key exceptions.”

“What exceptions?”

“I’ll take this part, Carmen,” Lauren said. “Here’s how it went. You remember that night, they had everybody come to the station and give statements. You were one of them.”

“Sure, how can I forget?”

“I know. So anyway, when Marybeth and Sean interviewed Niki Stevens, at first she played innocent, but eventually confessed she was the one stole the movie. In defense of Marybeth, you have to remember, they were in the first twenty-four hours of a major murder investigation. The general procedure is the detectives keep the information they get under wraps until things start getting sorted out. In other words, the very last thing Marybeth was gonna do was run around to each interview room and tell all you suspects that Niki stole the movie, not Jenny. But what DID happen was Alice confessed to pushing Jenny off the deck and pushing her into the pool. And after that, everything else pretty much stopped.”

“What that meant was, the stolen movie negatives therefore had nothing to do with Jenny’s murder. You follow? So it became secondary. Marybeth talked to Aaron Kornbluth at the studio, that was the correct next step, since the negs were his property, or anyway the studio’s property as well as their problem now. Now, I’ll give you exactly one guess what the studio wanted to do.”

“Oh, fuck, sure, I can guess. Tina and Bette and everybody were pissed at them anyway, for changing the ending and being chickenshit about the theme. So let me guess: The studio wanted to bury the whole thing. Jenny, Adele, Tina, the movie, and most of all their precious star, Niki Stevens.’

“Kit, I’m not even gonna give you the bronze medal for that one. Not even tin.”

Kit sighed. “So the studio wanted everything hushed up. And the biggest part of it was telling the whole world that Niki Stevens stole them, and Jenny was innocent.”

Lauren nodded.

“I’m a little disappointed Marybeth went along with it,” Kit said.

“Okay, let me say this. In defense of Marybeth, who has gotten some flak for this clusterfuck, Marybeth didn’t fuck up. Yes, her case got fucked up, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Alice confessed, that was the first thing that fucked it up, and then procedurally, the case got turned over to the DA’s office for processing. The studio not only didn’t want to press charges against Niki, it was never openly acknowledged the negatives were ever missing in the first place. What was Marybeth supposed to do, hold a press conference and tell everyone that the negatives for a bad, out-of-control movie director by a prima donna novice got stolen but were now returned? Cops don’t hold press conferences saying there was no crime and no one’s being changed with anything.”

“They should have,” Shane grumbled.

“Well, you know, this is the real world,” Carmen said. “Much as I hate to admit it. But Hollywood is a company town, and its business is making and selling movies and TV shows and music. You know how many TV pilots are made every year? Hundreds. And when they die, when they get cancelled, there’s no announcement, no press conference. What this town does is it lets bad movies and bad TV shows die very quiet deaths, if they can get away with it. And that’s what happened to _Lez Girls_. The project died, and they let it, and there was no funeral. That’s Hollywood. That’s just the way it is. Happens every day, and ten times a week. ‘Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.’”

“Huh?” Kit said.

“Sorry,” Carmen said. “It’s a line from a movie.”

“Oh, right. I should have known, you being the movie gal,” Kit said. “Speaking of which, was Jenny’s movie really that bad? Tina worked on it really hard.”

“I know she did,” Carmen said. “The thing is, we’ll never know. From what I understand, they never got to the editing stage. All the stuff in the cans, they were the dailies, all the unassembled pieces. For all we know, maybe some editing genius could have cut it together and made a half decent flick out of it. At least until we come to the problem of the ending being different. But who knows? Maybe it’s brilliant. Shane, do you know if they ever shot Jenny’s original ending?”

“I don’t have any idea,” Shane said. “Jenny and I walked out the day Adele took over, so I don’t know what they shot afterward. I never paid much attention to what they were shooting, anyway. I came in, did hair, hung out, and went home.”

Lauren glanced at her watch. “Kit, we’ve taken a lot of your time already, and I’m very grateful. But before we go, I have to ask you the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Given a lot of new information you may still need to process on top of a couple of years to think about it, who do you think killed Jenny? Tell us what you think.”

“What do I think? That ain’t too hard. Not Bette, not Tina. Not Alice. Not Shane. Not Helena. I can’t say about Max, but I admit I didn’t care for her much. Him. Whatever. That’s about all the ones I know. I never met this Adele at the studio, or the other studio people. I don’t think I ever met Niki, but everybody say she cray. So if I had to say somebody who was there, my money’d be on Max. But still, coulda been somebody else. Sorry if that’s not helpful. Oh, I just remembered, one other person.”

“Who’s that?”

“Me. But I didn’t do it, either.

“Well, I hate to tell you this, Kit,” Lauren said, “but you were never high on our list in the first place.”

“I suppose that’s good news,” Kit said. “We outta here now?”

“Yep, soon as you bring us the check,” Lauren said.

“Check? You be jokin’, right, white girl?”

“I thought you said the only things free at _The Planet_ were hugs and your good advice.”

“I did say that, and you girls better git on the road ‘fore I change my mind and Colleen brings you back a check for hunnert and ninety-seven dollars and fifty-four cents. That’s food, gratuity and advice.”

They laughed, got their hugs and left.


	18. Continental Divide

“Auntie Carmie! Auntie Shay-Shay!”

“Look, it’s a ballet angel! Hi, Tiny Dancer,” Carmen said.

“Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!” Shane said, making big kissing sounds with her hand over her mouth and waving them toward Carmen’s laptop on the LASD conference room table. They were Skyping Tina and Bette in New York, per earlier arrangement, and when the view first came up on the screen Angelica was in the foreground, sitting on Tina’s lap as Bette hovered behind Tina’s shoulder. In the conference room, Shane did the same thing, hovering right behind Carmen’s shoulder. Lauren stood off to the side and out of the picture, watching and grinning. Carmie and Shay-Shay were in for some serious ribbing. Wait until Marybeth heard those nicknames.

‘We just ate dinner,” Angelica said.

“Did you?” Carmen asked. “Was it good? What did you have? Did you save some for me?”

Angelica’s round, brown face fell. “No, sorry, Auntie Carmen, we ate it all. It was bay scallops we got at the fish market. Momma T broiled them. I put the seasoning on.”

“Did you? I bet it was delicious,” Carmen said. “How’s school and ballet?”

“School’s okay,” Angelica said. “In ballet we started practicing _The Nutcracker_. We’re going to do it for Christmas.”

“ _The Nutcracker_! That’s my very, very favoritest ballet,” Carmen said.

“Will you come see me in it?” Angelica asked.

“You know, sweetie, I just may have to jump on an airplane and fly to New York and come visit you guys, especially if you’re dancing. Are you the Sugar Plum Fairy?”

“No, I’m not old enough. One of the older girls in the upper class is doing it. In the first act I’m a mouse, and in the second act I’m one of the angels.”

“Angelica an angel. Why am I not surprised? It’s type-casting.” Carmen said.

“Auntie Shay-Shay, will you come see me, too?”

Carmen moved aside to let Shane sit in front of the laptop. “I don’t know, babe, I’ll have to check my schedule, and that’s a couple months away. But I’d sure like to.”

“Please try,” Angelica said.

“Okay, I will, Shane grinned.

“Come on, Miss Diva, time for you to start getting ready for bed, and Momma Bette and I have to talk to Carmen and Shane,” Tina said. “Bette, come sit down, I’ll be right back.”

“Bye-eeee,” Angelica yelled at the laptop as Tina rose with her and took her hand to walk to her bedroom.

“Hey, guys,” Bette said, sitting down at the laptop.

“Hi, Bette. Boy, Angelica is getting so big,” Shane said. “I bet she’s a handful.”

“Oh, she’s great,” Bette said. “Some days she’s only eight years old, but a lot of days she’s thirty-four. Tina and I joke at dinner time that we’re a single-parent household, and it’s not either of us.” Everyone laughed.

Tina returned to the dining room and sat down next to Bette. “She’s reading a book, so she’s good for a while,” Tina said. “Okay, tell us what’s up. We’ve already heard lots of rumors and talked to Kit. We know Max is dead.”

Shane and Carmen had pulled two more chairs in front of Carmen’s laptop, and Lauren now sat between them. “Guys, let me introduce Detective Lauren Hancock, of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department,” Carmen said. “Lauren, read ‘em their rights while they frisk each other.”

Lauren laughed and waved. “I’ve heard a lot about you two and your ballet star,” she said.

“We have a big question, though,” Bette said. “When are you going to get your own TV series?”

“I can pitch it to my people,” Tina said. “Dynamic ex-LA detective teams with smoking DJ and her quirky, hippie sidekick transplant surgeon like that gal on _Three Rivers_ , and they form their own private eye firm out of their chic home on a canal in Venice.”

“We brainstormed the title,” Bette said. “What do you think of ‘ _Dick, Dyke, Doc’_?”

“I’m sorry, you’re breaking up,” Carmen said. “It sounded like you said, ‘ _Go fuck yourselves_.’”

“Sounded like ‘ _New York, New York, Come Kiss My Ass_ ,” Shane said.

Lauren folded her arms and said, “Whenever you guys are ready.” But she was laughing.

“We’re sorry,” Tina said. “We just haven’t seen Shane and Carmen in so long, we have a lot to get out of our systems.”

“Lauren’s right,” Bette said. “We shouldn’t be laughing, we have to talk about two murders.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Tina said. “I’m sorry, guys. What can you tell us? What do you want to know?”

Even though Kit had already given them the headlines, it still took almost an hour to bring Bette and Tina up to speed about Max and Bakersfield, and Niki taking the negatives, not Jenny.

“I’m gob-smacked,” Tina said.

“Jesus,” Bette murmured. “You really think Max sold the baby?”

“We don’t have any idea, it’s just a theory. We haven’t even begun to look into it yet,” Lauren said.

“What does it have to do with Jenny’s murder?” Tina asked.

“None we can figure out,” Carmen said. “Maybe they are unconnected. But no, we don’t like that idea much, but otherwise we don’t have any link between the two.”

“But if the baby isn’t part of it, then you do have links?” Bette asked.

“Just the one big, big link,” Lauren said. “A group of eight of you that night, and now two of you have been murdered. We don’t like that idea, either, but we’re stuck with it.”

“And then you have Niki,” Tina said.

Lauren nodded. “And then we have Niki. She links to one murder, but not the other, so far as we can see.”

“And you haven’t talked to her yet.”

“Not yet. At first, it was because we just didn’t get around to her, we talked to you guys first, Kit, Adele and Aaron –”

“Ugh, don’t mention that slug’s name,” Tina murmured.

“– and we had forensic stuff to review. But now I’m at the point where I think we’re wise to wait, talk to everybody else first, because when we get to her, she’s going to get grilled like a kahlua pig at a luau. And we have to track down Tom and follow the baby trail, too.”

“Have you talked to Alice?”

“No, but she’s on the list. We’ll get to her.”

Bette sighed. “It suddenly got complicated, didn’t it?”

“Sure did,” Carmen said. “Alice confesses, and we all move on with our lives.”

“But with Alice in jail for a crime she didn’t commit,” Tina said, standing up. “Let me go check on Angelica. You guys can talk to Bette privately, if you need to.” She left the room.

“My turn in the barrel,” Bette said with a grim smile. “Have you got any other suspects?”

“You,” Lauren said. “Tina. Shane. Kit. Alice. Helena. Max, even though he’s dead. Tom. Niki. Adele. Aaron. Angelica was there that night, too, but we’re pretty sure she didn’t do it.”

Bette didn’t look amused.

“We have one more small but good bombshell to drop.”

“What’s that?”

“We had some experts look at the cell phone video Jenny made of you and Kelly in your kitchen. They said no way you were going down on her. Your head was 12 to 18 inches away from her. It was all a trick of the camera angle.”

Bette sighed and looked down at her hands. She said nothing.

“Bette,” Carmen said. “It’s good news.”

“I know. I guess I do, anyway. But it never mattered, did it? I still had a motive for killing the little psychopath. It didn’t matter that I knew I was innocent. Didn’t matter then, doesn’t matter now. Jenny thought she saw what she wanted to see. She was trying her best to break us up. It clears me of cheating on Tina, but nothing else.”

“No.”

“So what’s the point?”

“We want to tell Tina.”

“Oh, good. Let’s rip the long, long-healed scab off the ancient wound.”

“We wanted to talk to you first,” Carmen said softly.

“I know. Thank you for that.”

“But Tina has a right to know. We think she should know, beyond all shadow of a doubt. And she should know that we all know, that we believe you, even though we believed you at the time.”

“Did you? I could never tell. It wasn’t like I had a spotless reputation.”

“I don’t know anyone who does,” Carmen said.

Bette sighed again. “Okay, you can tell her. You want me out of the room, or in?”

“Your call, whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“You think I’ll be comfortable, huh?” She grinned. “Let me go get her.” She left to round up Tina.

“She’s upset,” Shane said. “It still hurts.”

“Yes, it does,” Lauren said. “But think of it as we’re removing an old piece of splinter. We’re re-opening a wound, but so it can finally heal completely and cleanly.”

They were silent until Bette came back with Tina.

“What happened,” Tina asked. “I know something’s happened. Bette won’t say, but I know she’s upset.”

“Tina, in a perverse sort of way it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. We know it’s a sore subject, but here it is. You know that video Jenny shot that supposed shows Bette … you know … with Kelly in the kitchen? We had some forensic experts look at it. Their opinion was unanimous and without a doubt. Bette was not, repeat, not, going down on Kelly. Her face was at least a foot or more away, just like she said. She was bent down, cleaning up broken glass. Bette was telling the truth, and Jenny saw what she wanted to see.”

“I know,” Tina said. “I know.”

“But it doesn’t let us off the hook,” Bette said quietly. “You or me, and I guess not Kit, either. All three of us. The point is, we were all pissed at Jenny about it. And you had a second reason, the stolen negatives. Never mind that we now know Niki took them. None of this is about what was true, it was about what people believed at the time.”

Tina was quiet for a long time. Finally she whispered, “God damn her. God damn her. God damn her.” Her eyes were wet. No one had to ask who she meant. “Sometimes I wish she had never moved in next door. Kept her sorry fucking ass in fucking Illinois.”

“I know how you feel, Tina,” Carmen said quietly. “But then I’d have never met you and Bette, and Angelica. Or Kit. Helena. Alice. I’d have never met Dana or Tasha. Shane and I would have been a one-night stand.”

“We’d have never gotten to see your flower box,” Tina said, laughing.

“That’s right! See, there was a HUGE silver lining to all the crap Jenny put us through. You got to admire my pubes.”

“So it wasn’t a total loss after all,” Tina said, and everyone laughed. They fell into another silence, but more comfortable than the last.

Finally Lauren spoke. “When you’re ready, I’d like to talk about that night.”

Tina sighed. “Yeah, okay. Go. Fire away.”

“Knowing what you know now,” Lauren said, “about Niki stealing the negatives, Max, the baby business, Tom, anything and everything, is there anything at all that you can add? Anything new you can think of? Who do you think killed Jenny, and why? Could it have been Max? Somebody else?”

Tina and Bette looked at each other, then at their laptop camera. “We’ve talked about it dozens of times,” Bette said. “Basically we have nothing. Could Max have killed her? Maybe, yes. But neither of us have a shred of evidence to back it up. And it’s complicated by the fact that neither of us liked Max very much, and we try not to let that prejudice us against her. Him.”

“That’s a pretty common sentiment, it seems,” Lauren said. “Tina, tell me about Niki. You knew her pretty well. Could she have done it?”

“Gee, that’s hard. Is she a bitch? Absolutely. Is she smart? No, but she’s sneaky, wily, cunning, mean, selfish, self-centered. But here’s where I get stuck. If she killed Jenny, why did she stick around, hiding in the bushes, and doing it so badly she got caught? I mean, if I were in her shoes I’d have beat feet out of there so fast your head would spin. Who commits a murder, then sticks around and watches? That’s just plain crazy. Even for a crazy person it’s crazy.” She turned and looked at Bette. “That sentence doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No,” Bette said, “but we know what you mean. That’s my stopper, too. If Niki did it, why stay?”

“Okay,” Lauren said, “but consider this: If Alice did it, or Shane, or you, or Bette, or Kit, Max or Helena, whichever one of you might have done it, that person killed her and then came back into the media room, sat down, and watched the farewell video.”

“Right, exactly,” Bette said. “Which is exactly why none of us in that room did it. Not even Alice. Not even Max. Not possible. No.”

“All right,” Lauren said. “How about this: Could Max or Niki have witnessed the murder by someone else, and hid that fact, for whatever reason? Could Niki have seen Max do it?”

“Sure,” Bette said, “but once again, why stick around and watch what happens next?”

“Let’s flip it. Could Max have seen Niki kill Jenny, and then said nothing? Could she have thought, well, good, the bitch is dead, good for Niki. Then she comes in and calmly watches the movie.”

“But why say nothing?” Carmen asked. “Why doesn’t Max come back in saying, ‘Well, that bitch Jenny is dead, and good riddance. I just saw Niki push her off the deck and into the pool.”

“Shock?” Shane suggested.

“Money,” Tina said. “Extortion. Hit up Niki for a big payout in exchange for silence.”

“Not withstanding she’s a sly, cunning, conniving bitch, can you guys really see Niki pushing Jenny’s body into the pool?” Lauren asked.

They all thought.

“Anybody?” Lauren asked.

Shane shook her head no.

“I don’t know her, never met her,” Carmen said.

“No,” Tina said. “I come back to the question, ‘Why stick around?’ So, no.”

“Here’s something to think about along those lines,” Carmen said, “and we talked about it briefly once before. How did Niki get there that night? Nobody has ever said anything about finding her car. Did she drive and park three blocks away? Or did she come with somebody? Was somebody with her, and did that person run away from the crime scene so fast he or she left Niki behind? Maybe Niki didn’t stay, maybe she got abandoned. And now, one step further–”

“Did that person kill Jenny,” Bette said, more a statement than a question.

“Right,” Carmen said. “And could that unknown driver be Adele?”

There was silence as they thought about it.

“It could be Adele,” Tina finally said, “but that doesn’t mean Adele was the killer. It only means she ran faster than Niki, hopped in the getaway car, and left Niki there to face the music.”

“Boy, that’s cold,” Carmen said.

“You don’t know Adele,” Shane said quietly.

“Or Niki,” Tina said.

There was more silence while everyone thought.

“Fasten your seat belts,” Carmen said. “We’re gonna take a ride. Let’s suppose Adele and Niki go to Bette and Tina’s house, or maybe Shane and Jenny’s house, it doesn’t matter. They sneak around back and see a party going on. People coming onto the deck, going back inside. Shane going to her house, maybe, and coming out really pissed some time later. Maybe all they see is Shane leading Tina out of Tina and Bette’s house, and going into Shane and Jenny’s house. Niki knows the negatives are in the attic, because she put them there. Shane and Tina seem pissed, and they go into Tina and Bette’s house, and don’t come back out. Shane, Tina, is that accurate so far?”

“Yes, we came out, we were both pissed. We went back into my house,” Tina said.

“Did either of you say anything? I mean, while you walked from one house to the other, anything loud enough that Niki and Adele or whoever, hiding in the bushes, might have overheard?”

“I don’t think so,” Tina said. “I was halfway between monumentally pissed and in a state of shock. Shane, did we say anything?”

“If we did I can’t remember,” Shane said, “but I don’t think we did. We just both wanted to fucking wring Jenny’s neck. But if we said anything, I don’t have any recollection of it.”

“Okay,” Carmen said. “You both go inside. We’ll get back to that in a minute. And then a few minutes later Jenny comes from somewhere, and somebody comes out on the upper deck as Jenny maybe comes up the stairs. That person is pissed. Jenny and this person talk, the person pushes Jenny off the deck, and then walks down the stairs and rolls her into the pool. Then this person goes back into the house, sits down with all the rest of you, and watches the rest of the farewell tape. Meanwhile, Niki and Adele are in the bushes and have seen the whole thing. ‘Holy shit!’ Adele says, and runs for the car and drives away. ‘Oh, shit,’ Niki says, ‘Fuck you, Adele.’ So she stays, because maybe she’s in a bit of shock and not smart enough to figure out her next move. And at that moment Alice comes out of the house on the deck, sees Jenny floating in the pool, runs back in and tells you all. You all run out, fish Jenny out of the pool, somebody calls 9-1-1, and so on. Niki is in shock, stays and watches.”

“Great,” Bette said, “but who came out of the house and pushed Jenny off the deck?”

“”Not me!” Tina said.

“Nope,” Carmen said, “not you.”

“Not me,” Shane said.

“Nope, not you, either,” Carmen said.

“Who, then?” Lauren asked.

“Max.”

“Max? Why Max?”

“Because Max was the next one to be murdered,” Carmen said. “This is all just a theory. But suppose Jenny and Adele see the murder, as we’ve speculated. If there has to be some link between Jenny and Max’s murders, that can be the only logical one. Otherwise, what could Niki, Adele, and Max all have in common? Jenny’s murder is the only possible thing. Now, here’s another thing. We’ve all been supposing that the killer, whoever it was, killed Jenny and was unaware that Niki was hiding in the bushes, watching the houses. Maybe Niki or Adele made a noise, and Max heard it. Or maybe he’s just not sure. In any case, a little while later, after the police arrive, Niki is found hiding in the bushes. Max says to himself, ‘Aha! She saw me kill Jenny.’ But see, nothing happens. Niki never squeals on Max. Max may wonder why, he may even expect to be arrested and charged at any moment. He’s resigned, and maybe he just doesn’t give a shit. Maybe he has no remorse. Then Alice confesses, the entire investigation goes to hell. Days, then weeks, then months go by, Alice gets sentenced to jail, and still Max is never arrested. Niki never says anything about Max. If Adele was there, too, Max remains unaware of it. Months go by, Alice goes to Humboldt, Max does whatever he does with the birth and disposition of the baby, and moves to Bakersfield. Why Bakersfield? Maybe just because it isn’t LA. Max had to leave LA, and it didn’t matter where. Niki and her driver, presumably Adele, know Max killed Jenny. So Max is living and working in Bakersfield, and knows there’s at least one witness to the murder, a witness who could send him to death row–”

“Not death row,” Lauren said, “not for second-degree murder.”

“Okay, maybe not,” Carmen said, “but I doubt Max knew enough law to know that. And it might not matter, first-degree, second degree, manslaughter, death row, or life, or just 10-to-15 at Humboldt or Sing Sing, or wherever they’d send a half-complete tranny. Max knows there’s witnesses who could send him away. Think about a tranny doing time in a jail. Never mind the length of the sentence; just think about a partial tranny in a major prison, even for a week. Think about the trial. Think about all the holding cells and transportation, being in buses and vans with hardened killers, back and forth. To me, solitary confinement on death row would be the first time I’d feel safe enough to go to the bathroom. Jesus.” Carmen shuddered. “So what does Max do?”

“It’s your story,” Lauren said. “Keep going.”

“Somehow, for some reason we don’t know yet, Max makes contact with Niki. We know Niki has tons of money, and Max has almost none. So Max says to Niki, ‘Yes, I killed the bitch, and I know you saw me do it. But so far I’ve skated. Now, give me a hundred thousand dollars or I’ll tell the police I saw you do it. It’ll be your word against mine, and your reputation sucks and you can’t afford the publicity, whereas I just don’t give a fuck. And if you don’t give me the money, I just might kill you, too, because you alone know I’m one tough, scary dyke tranny killer, so pay up, a hundred grand, or whatever the dollar amount is, or I tell the cops I saw you roll her into the pool and run into the bushes. Shit, maybe I just kill you for sport.’”

“And so now Niki has a problem,” Lauren picked up the story. “She talks it over with Adele, because Adele was there, too. And together they decide something has to be done about Max, not just for Niki’s sake, but for both of them, because Adele is in it, too, as another witness.”

“Right,” Lauren said. “And so Niki and Adele become a team, if they weren’t already. There’s a killer on the loose and they are targets. Adele is the brains, Niki has the posse. Somehow they need to get rid of Max. We don’t know the arrangements or even who actually did it, but they accomplish it, one dark night beside the freeway, when Max is pumped full of vodka and oxy. And they can rationalize it: Jenny’s murderer gets vigilante justice, and the threat to them is eliminated, too. They can call it justifiable homicide, proactive self-defense. Kill or be killed.”

“Jesus,” Tina murmured. “I’ve got a major movie treatment right here. You guys are fucking good!”

“If you do make a movie out of it, Tina,” Shane said, “Shane’s Sugar Shacks want the contract for hair and sugaring.”

“Gimme a break, Shane,” Tina laughed. “I don’t think we can afford you.”

* * *

After their goodbyes, Tina disconnected from Skype and closed her laptop. “What do you think?” she asked Bette.

“I don’t know,” Bette said, “but I can buy the Max idea.”

“No, no, no,” Tina said. “Not that. I mean, who’s sleeping with who? Are Shane and Carmen back together? Is Shane fucking Lauren? Is Lauren fucking Carmen?”

“I don’t know,” Bette said, “but I’ll tell you one thing: That’s one good-looking, edible detective.”

As they walked down the hall to check on Angelica, Tina thought, Yes, she is, and I am damn glad she’s an entire continent away from Bette.


	19. The Creep

Carmen got to the conference room the next morning at quarter to nine, and found Lauren deeply immersed in her laptop, with papers and print-outs all over the conference room table.

“Good morning. What’s all this?”

“Go grab your coffee, and I’ll tell you. I’m in the middle …” her voice trailed off in concentration. Carmen got her coffee, and came back and sat down, letting Lauren work. Finally she looked up. “Stopping point,” Lauren said. “I gotta piss and reload caffeine. Be right back.” She skidded a sheaf of papers across the table to Carmen.

Carmen turned around the print-out so she could read it. It was half a dozen pages of some sort of elaborate spreadsheet of financial information. She looked at the top of the page and saw that the report came from a bank, and the bank accounts belong to Niki Stevens, “dba Party Hearty LLC.” Paper-clipped to the back of the report were a couple of pages of legal boilerplate. Pursuant to LASD Warrant No. 12345 blah blah signed by Judge So-and-So, Court of Such-and-Such, County of Los Angeles, in re: the matter of Homicide Case 51039, etc. Letterhead, legal counsel Smith, Smith, and Smith on behalf of Bank of Blah Blah. Herewith please find the information requested in Warrant 12345, requested by Detective Sgt. Lauren Hancock blah blah. Signed and attested to this day Year of Our Lord, whenever wherever whatever.

Dba, doing business as. Niki’s corporate shell. Carmen flipped back to the numbers. Nothing stood out on the first page, so she turned to the second one. Nothing. Third one. Three numbers in the third column, cash withdrawals, were circled in somebody’s red marking pen, $9,950, $9,950, $9,950. In the next column the three dates of those transactions were underlined by the red pen. The dates were all on the same day of three consecutive months, October, November, December. Carmen turned the page. Two more amounts were circled, two more dates were underlined, $9,950, $9,950. January. February. Then came the month Jenny was murdered. Nothing. No more $9,950 cash withdrawals.

“Some of my financial warrants came back last night and this morning,” Lauren said, entering and sitting down with her coffee.

“I see that,” Carmen said.

“Interesting, huh?” Lauren said as Carmen studied the print-out.

“I don’t know what it means,” Carmen said.

“By itself, not much. But take a look at this.” She slid another paper-clipped sheaf of papers across the conference table to Carmen.

Similar legal boilerplate. Pursuant to LASD Warrant No. 98765 blah blah signed by Judge So-and-So, Court of Such-and-Such, County of Los Angeles, in re: the matter of Homicide Case 51039, etc. Letterhead, legal counsel Jones, Jones, and Jones on behalf of So-and-So. Herewith please find the information request in Warrant 98765, requested by Detective Sgt. Lauren Hancock blah blah. Signed and attested to this day … whenever wherever whatever. Different bank, though, First National Bank of blah blah, and different customer: Schecter, Jennifer D., dba StarryStarryNight Editorial Productions LLC.

Bottom of second page: $9,950, October. Third page: $9,950, November, December, January. Fourth page: $9,950, February. Cash withdrawals circled, dates underlined.

Carmen look at Lauren. “They each made the same cash withdrawals on the same days, of the same five months.”

“Yep.”

“Who does that?”

“Two people being blackmailed. Can’t use your American Express card. Can’t write personal or business checks. Blackmail tends to be a cash-only business. Small, unmarked bills, no sequence.”

“Why that amount? And why monthly installment the payment plan?”

“Easy-peasey,” Lauren said. “There’s a federal bank law called the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, also known as the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, that requires reporting of any cash transactions of ten thousand dollars or more to the IRS. That’s how they monitor drug dealers and the Mafia and so on. Big amounts of money. So if you keep the amount under ten grand there’s no reporting and you don’t trigger an alert. And if you are a patient, careful person but you want fifty or a hundred thousand, or whatever, you spread out the payments, easy to do if you know with certainty your victim isn’t going to blow town. But there’s a wrinkle.”

“What’s that?”

“The rule says a single payment of ten thousand, or two or more combined payments within a calendar year, going to the same person or company. So, the second time they make the withdrawal, it triggers the reporting. You have to fill out an IRS form called Form 8300, and so on.”

“So in November they triggered it? And, let’s see a calendar year. So they triggered it again in February.”

“Right. But here’s what I think. I don’t think either Jenny or Niki gave a shit about alerting the IRS. For one thing, they wouldn’t get caught at it for almost two years, at a minimum, and even then I don’t think anyone at the IRS would tumble. A movie star? A writer? Nobody gives a damn about their withdrawals. And that would be, you know, a year and a half or two years after the blackmail payments were made. And anyhow, how are they going to report them to the IRS? ‘We paid a blackmailer fifty or a hundred grand, please let us deduct it as a business expense. No, I don’t think the payment had anything to do with the Bank Secrecy Act. I think they were hiding them from just about everybody else, specifically, people close to them.”

“I don’t follow.”

“They each have accountants, for one thing, and people who file their taxes. And here’s the other thing. If you look at the bank records, they made the withdrawals at different branches of their own banks. I figure they did that so no one branch manager or branch bank teller would remember the transactions several months in a row. So they were covering their tracks with the bank people they dealt with, going in and asking for a big pile of cash, and I’m guessing not-sequential numbering, small but mixed denominations, and so on. They weren’t hiding from the IRS, they didn’t want their accountants and financial advisers to spot the pattern. You see, each month you get a bank statement, right? Well, each month, their banks statements would only show one single withdrawal of ninety-nine fifty, instead of some lump sum of fifty grand or a hundred grand, or whatever. And both of them spent money like sailors on shore leave. So a single withdrawal once a month wouldn’t stand out among all their other expenses. Shit, they could both say it was just walking-around money. One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Forget everything else, just focus on this one single thing. Why in the world would anyone do their banking from five different branches? Have you ever in your life used more than, say, one or two branches to do your banking? Maybe if you go out of town you stop in at the branch one time, maybe. But regularly? Hell, no. Now, that’s one normal person. What are the odds of two women closely associated with each other making the same withdrawals on the same day from no less than ten branches? That’s crazy, unless they were specifically instructed by someone to do this.”

“So that’s what we think? They each paid out–” Carmen stopped to do the math, but Lauren already had.

“Forty-nine, seven fifty. Times two, ninety-nine five. Almost a hundred grand. All cash. And you know what else is really smart?”

“What?”

“Just like most everybody else, Jenny and Niki tended to get paid in regular increments, usually monthly installments. Sure, they both had some really big income checks, too, from time to time, for contract signing agreements and things like that. Jenny got a flat half-million for what looks like that screenplay treatment Alice says Jenny stole. Niki got a big check when she signed up for _Lez Girls_. But mostly they get monthly royalty checks, Jenny for her books and Niki for her past movies, endorsements, and so on. Jenny got salary while she was directing, and Niki while shooting the movie. So every month, both of them have big paychecks coming in. That makes it easier for them to make a cash withdrawal, rather than have to pay out a much, much bigger one-time lump-sum blackmail payment.”

“Didn’t Jenny have other cash withdrawals?”

“Oh, sure, but most of them seem explainable. Most of them were smaller, and just seem to be for walking-around money. Both of them had financial advisers handling investments and accountants who paid most of their bills, and they spent most of their money by credit card. But remember when Jenny got the big check for the screenplay treatment and went out and bought the Beemer? She took out a big, big pile of cash so she could pay cash for it, which let her avoid interest payments, and probably even lowered the cost of the car a little, since then the dealer doesn’t have to pay any credit card company for the purchase. She pulled out $67,923, which seemed like a lot of money, but I checked the date of purchase of the Beemer, and it was that same day. I called the dealership, and they confirmed: Jenny gave them the $67 grand whatever in cash and drove the Beemer off the lot. The thing is, the cash withdrawal was duly reported by the bank, and nobody cared because it was all above board and perfectly legal, beginning to end, and reported to the IRS on a Form 8300. Half a mil in, sixty-seven and change out, new car, trade-in, the whole shebang. All the paperwork, nice and legal. Nothing to see here, folks.”

“But the blackmail payments are different.”

“Right, they are. Not individually, but when Jenny has five withdrawals and Niki has five withdrawals, then we have a pattern. Then we have something going on.”

“Got any ideas?”

“I do,” Lauren said. “Look at the date of each withdrawal, the day of the month.”

“Uh,” Carmen said, studying the printouts. “October 6, November 6, December–” She switched to Niki’s printout. “October 6, November 6, December 6. All ten withdrawals on the sixth of each month, and like you said, each from a different branch location.”

“Right. Now look at March 6.”

“Uh… nothing.”

“Nope.”

“They didn’t make the March withdrawals. So … they both stopped paying?”

“Looks like it, unless the blackmailer only wanted about fifty grand from each, and was then happy to let them off the hook.”

“Do we think that’s what happened? The blackmailer clocked out happy and went away?”

“We do not. We most certainly do not think that.”

“Because … because Jenny was murdered two days later,” Carmen said.

“Bingo. Like we said, cops hate even somewhat explainable coincidences, but there’s no fucking way somebody pays blackmail for five months, misses the six month, gets murdered, and the murder and the blackmail are purely coincidental, completely unrelated. No, period. Fucking, period. Way, period. Exclamation point. Also, they could both afford way more than fifty grand. Any competent blackmailer would know that. Niki especially. Big, famous movie star. Know what she got paid for that movie about the bitchy Valley Girls? Eight million up front, and that’s before the residuals and royalties and whatnot. Fifty grand was walking-around money for her.”

“What were they being blackmailed about?” Carmen asked. “Has to be that goddamned sex tape they made.”

“The one where every single copy was destroyed?” Lauren asked sarcastically.

“The one nobody except half of Hollywood had a copy of.”

“If half of Hollywood had it, it would have surfaced on some TV show by now. But yes, somebody had a copy, and had a plan on what to do with it.”

“This bumps up Adele as a suspect, don’t you think?”

“I do.”

“But we think Adele may have been at the scene with Niki.”

“We do think that, but so what? First, we have no evidence to suggest either Jenny or Niki knew the identity of the blackmailer, and it could still have been Adele, if she’s as sneaky and underhanded and cunning as she has shown every sign of being. Second, we don’t yet know why Niki was at Jenny’s house that night. If it was Adele who came along, maybe it was to find out what was going on and why her two blackmail victims had missed the March payment two days earlier.”

Carmen sighed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She looked up at Lauren. “It all gets worse and worse. Both murders get more complicated. We have more suspects and more motives, good solid motives, but they don’t seem to tie Jenny to Max’s murder in Bakersfield.”

“No, not that we know of. But the night is still young, even if it’s only ten after nine in the morning.” Just then her cellphone binged a message. Lauren looked at it. “Come on, we’re being summoned for an audience with Her Royal Highness.”

They got up and left the conference room, and met Shane as they were coming down the hall.

“Turn around, follow us,” Lauren said. “We have much to report.”

Shane fell in behind them as they walked to Marybeth’s office. “What’s up?” she whispered to Carmen.

“We’re following the money,” Carmen said. “It’s bad.”

Marybeth’s door was open and she waved them in. “Auntie Carmie, Auntie Shay-Shay and Auntie … Auntie … “

“Anti-perspirant?” Lauren offered.

“Antidisestablishmentarianism?” Carmen suggested.

“Too long,” Marybeth said.

“Antipasto?” Shane asked.

“Not bad,” Carmen said.

“I haven’t had breakfast,” Shane said.

“I hear there’s been a break,” Marybeth said, pretending not to be amused.

“A couple of my financial warrants came back,” Lauren said. “It looks like Jenny and Niki were both being extorted or blackmailed.” She started briefing Marybeth and Shane.

Marybeth looked at Shane. “I’m guessing you had no suspicion Jenny was being blackmailed? She never said anything?”

“No, no clue whatsoever.”

“She didn’t act funny or strange in some way?”

“Shit, Jenny acted strange for the six years I knew her. And those last few months, there was just so much other shit going on, her book being made into a movie, directing it, fucking Niki, breaking up with Niki, messing with all our heads and our lives. So, yes, Jenny acted funny. Does that help?”

“Point taken,” Marybeth said. “I had to ask.”

“I know,” Shane said. “No problem. The thing to understand is Jenny didn’t seem to care all that much about money. At first she had nothing, and although she had money problems and talked about it, and she got jobs to pay the rent, she never really obsessed about it. Money was just something she needed to live, but she was never this money-grubbing freak, you know? And then when it started coming in, when she sold her book and stuff, she spent it pretty freely, but even then you couldn’t exactly say it was money that drove her.”

“I agree,” Carmen said. “She liked money, like a lot of people do, but I wouldn’t say it made her crazy. Everything else, maybe, but not money. The worst you could say about her with money was she spent it almost carelessly, sometimes, and maybe she used it as a social marker, a symbol of her success. ‘Look at me, I’m rich.’ But exactly how rich, or what to do with it, no.”

Lauren’s cell phone chimed an incoming call. She glanced at it, and let it go to voicemail. Two minutes later it chimed a text message: “Please call ASAP when free. Urgent. Have important info re Schecter murder.”

“Uh, sorry. This says urgent. I think I need to take this,” Lauren said. “Carmen, can you continue for me for a minute?”

“Sure, go,” Carmen said. She picked up the story and their theories about the blackmail payments while Lauren took her call outside Marybeth’s office. Lauren talked for nearly five minutes, then came back in.

“Sorry,” she said, sitting down.

“Something for us?” Marybeth asked.

“Yes. It looks like we may have a brand new suspect in Jenny’s murder.”

“No!” Carmen blurted. “Who?”

“That’s the thing. We now have a potential unsub, a man. My phone call was from Gladys Wilkinson, the woman who bought Tina and Bette’s house. In other words, the crime scene.”

“And?”

“She says she and her neighbor across the back need to talk to us. It seems there was somebody hanging around in back in the house on the other side of the bushes a few days before the murder.”

There was silence. Marybeth drummed her fingers on her desk, thinking and frowning.

“You have that look on your face,” Lauren said to her.

“I’m not a happy camper,” Marybeth said.

“We can tell,” Lauren said.

“When momma’s not happy, nobody’s happy,” Carmen said. “You said that.”

“I think I said you don’t want to piss off momma, but same thing.”

“Care to share?” Lauren asked.

“We’re on thin ice,” Marybeth said. “We are now essentially working on two murders. I didn’t like it when we had Alice in jail, Shane under suspicion, and only one murder, and I like it even less now with twice as many murders, Shane not under suspicion, but a handful of other worthy suspects, one of them about three minutes old, all running around lose.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Carmen said. “You’re the cops.”

“We’re not supposed to be investigating homicides,” Lauren said. “We’re the missing persons bureau. It’s a turf thing. Stepping on another division’s toes. Written rules and regulations.”

“Oh. Right. I see that now,” Carmen said.

“Fortunately, I may have a solution,” Marybeth said. “Grasshoppers, remain silent, watch and learn.” She picked up her phone and punched in four numbers.

“I love it when she does this,” Lauren whispered, but loud enough so everyone could hear.

“Jack? It’s Marybeth … good, good … yes, keeping busy, but not as busy as you … uh-huh, speaking of you being so busy, I have a problem but it comes with a solution, and when I tell you what it is, you’re gonna say, ‘Marybeth, how can I ever thank you for lightening my burden’ … oh, Jack. What a cruel, suspicious mind you have … may I remind you, I learned this kind of brown-nosing bullshit directly from you … oh, now you want to cut to the chase. Okay, here it is. We caught a missing persons complaint, and when we looked into it we discovered it led to an old cold-case homicide out in Bakersfield. The guy we started to look for was deliberately hit-and-run two years ago. But it’s an unsolved out in Bakersfield, and neither you nor I care, except that then we discovered it has links back to closed homicide right here, and in fact it’s one of my old cases back when I was your star pupil and ace homicide cop … no, the Schecter thing, remember? The screenwriter slash movie director found drowned in a neighbor’s pool … yes, that one, only they don’t call them dykes any more, they don’t like it and it makes them testy and difficult to talk to … yes, I know they call themselves dykes, but you and I can’t … thank you. May I continue? Good. Anyway, my missing persons case went all hinky and now I’m looking at two homicides, one outside our jurisdiction and one in, and both colder than your ex-wife. How is Lorraine, by the way? Give her my love. The rules say I should now turn both cases over to you guys, and if I do you’re just gonna stack it to your cold case table, where it will languish until it’s even older and more decrepit than you. So what I’m saying, Jack, is how about letting us continue to run with it? We’ve already put in some work on it and we’ve made good progress … yes, I have my best detective on it. You remember Lauren Hancock? … no, Jack, I didn’t steal her away from you, I just had her and Sean Holden on my team, and you got to keep Sean and I got to keep Lauren, fifty-fifty, what could be fairer than that? You’re happy, I’m happy … okay, you’re not happy, okay, I stole her, nanny nanny boo hoo. So sue me. Anyway, what do you say, Jack? … yes, I’m personally supervising the case … no, I’m not fucking going to say pretty pretty please … no, not that, either. You’re disgusting, but I love you anyway … yes, but not that way, more like a great-great-grandfather with Alzheimer’s and a skin condition … well, wear a hat more often … thanks, Jack, I owe you one. Give my love to Margot … Christy? What happened to Margot? … oh, I’m sorry. You get to keep the house this time? That’s good, I don’t need you sleeping on my couch … in your dreams, buddy.” She hung up the phone and sighed. “Hancock, now you see why I keep telling you to stay on the street and don’t even think about admin.”

“Yes, Honorable Sensei. That was masterful. There’s tissues on your credenza and we can look away while you clean all the brown off your nose.”

“Fuck you. I kept your case in our house.”

“What happened to Margot? I liked Margot, better than Lorraine, anyway.”

“I did, too. Jack said Margot bought a new car and kept taking it back to the dealership to adjust the brakes, until one day she and her car salesman took the car out for a test drive to Palm Springs and didn’t come back for three days.”

“Oh, my,” Lauren said. “Maybe the accelerator stuck.”

“I’ve had my brakes adjusted a time or two,” Carmen said.

“Brake drums,” Shane said. “Sometimes they go out of round.”

‘Don’t you people have a new suspect to go violate the Miranda rights of?” Marybeth asked.

“On our way, chief,” Lauren said, hurrying out the door with Carmen and Shane.

“Don’t call me chief,” Marybeth muttered, but they were gone. “And for god’s sakes keep your zipper zipped. If it’s not too late.” She wasn’t worried about McCutcheon; she was old news who had burned Lauren once before, and was a playa, not Lauren’s style. It was the smart, cheery, bright-eyed one, the keeper. Good thing she lived in San Francisco, and spent most of her life far out to sea, well beyond the range of even a good but lonely street detective like Lauren.

* * *

Gladys Wilkinson opened the door just seconds after Lauren rang the doorbell of Tina and Beth’s previous residence, a.k.a. the scene of the crime. She was still in her hospital scrubs.

“Hi, Detective Hancock, hey, Carmen. I saw you pull up out front. I’d say it was nice to see you again, but, well, you know. Circumstances.”

“We understand,” Lauren said, entering the living room. “I know you work nights, thanks for staying up late to talk to us. Gladys, I don’t think you’ve met Shane McCutcheon. Shane, this is Gladys Wilkinson.”

“Hi, nice to meet you,” Shane said. “I used to live next door.”

“With Jenny and Carmen,” Gladys said. “Nice to finally meet you. Well, everybody, come on in, let’s go to the kitchen. I’m having my sleepy-time tea, since I’m going to bed soon, but I can offer you real, honest-to-god, caffeinated coffee.”

“That would be great,” Carmen said. “Shane in particular could use a cup, I bet, and I could do with another one.”

As they sat around the kitchen table Gladys picked up her cell phone and made a call. “Hey, it’s me. They’re here. Come on over.” To Lauren, Carmen and Shane she said, “That was my neighbor across the back. She’s coming right over. That’s what this is all about. She saw something.”

Before the coffee was ready there was a knock on the back door. “Come in,” Gladys called out, putting cream, sugar, and artificial sweetener on the kitchen table. A tall, athletic woman with dark brown hair came in the back door. She was in her early thirties and was dressed in spandex bicycling gear. She offered her hand to everyone to shake.

“Hi, I’m Carol Marciano,” she said.

“Lauren Hancock, LA County Sheriff’s Department.”

Shane and Carmen introduced themselves.

“Hey, everybody sit down,” Gladys said. “Coffee’s up.” She started passing out coffee mugs as everyone settled in.

Carol started in without being asked. “’Kay, here’s what happened. My husband and I moved in back there” – she gestured over her should toward the house behind Bette and Tina’s pool on the far side of the hedge line – “a couple years ago, like, maybe a year before that girl’s murder. Jerry’s a lawyer and I’m an event planner, so we’re hardly ever home much, and when we do get down time we go hiking and camping a lot. Long story short, we never got to know Betsy and Dina when they lived here. Then a few days before the murder I had this big week-long conference thing in La Jolla, and I was gone for nearly two weeks, and Jerry was pulling those 14-hour days young lawyers do, so we weren’t around when it happened. ‘Kay? So by the time we got home and heard about it, it was old news, and somebody was arrested, and we didn’t think too much about it, because it was all over, you know? And then Gladys buys the house and moves in, and for a long time we don’t ever meet her, either. And Gladys’ backyard has this tall bamboo privacy fence along the back lot line, and it’s like a thick jungle, so we never chat over the fence, you know? Because we can’t, it’s an impenetrable wall, so we don’t know who lives on the other side. And then a few months ago Jerry and I decide to re-landscape our back yard and we remove some of the hedges and trees and stuff, and one day we’re back there working when Gladys come home from the hospital and she’s in her backyard and we’re in our backyard. The old bamboo fence has deteriorated and Gladys is pulling it down to replace it, and lo and behold, we finally get to meet face-to-face. Of course, Gladys works nights and we work long, long days, but we get to see each other and wave once in a while, and then a few weeks ago Gladys invites me over for morning coffee and we become friends at long last. And we talk with Gladys and we put a little arbor-type gate between our backyards.”

“We went out to dinner, too,” Gladys said.

“Yes, you had that date with the hottie from radiology. We double-dated,” Carol said.

“Trust me, he wasn’t that all that hot,” Gladys said, frowning but laughing. “Never mind him, keep talking.”

“So anyway, I don’t have any events this week so I finally get a little time off, and it wasn’t until yesterday that I got some time to chat with Gladys. And I say, ‘Hey, what do you know about the murder that I heard happened here?’ And Gladys starts telling me about Betsy and Dina and the young woman who lived next door. Jill? Jean?”

“Jenny,” Gladys said. “Jenny Schecter.”

“Right.”

“Before you go further,” Gladys said, “I should tell you that Shane, here, was Jenny’s roommate, and Carmen used to be her roommate, too. So they both knew Jenny very well. And they lived next door.”

“Oh, okay. I’m very sorry for your loss,” Carol said. “I guess this might be painful for you to talk about.”

“We’re okay,” Carmen said. “It’s been two years now. Please, don’t stop. What happened?”

“So Gladys is telling me what she knows, and there was this party that night, and one of the other women at the party pushed Jenny off the deck and pushed her in the pool and killed her, and then was arrested for it the next day, and now she’s in prison somewhere upstate.”

“Her name is Alice Pieszecki,” Shane said. “She’s one of our best friends. For what it’s worth, she didn’t do it.”

Carol nodded. “That what Gladys said you guys said. You’re investigating the case all over again, and she tells me that. So then I say, ‘Well, that’s interesting they re-opened the case. I wonder if they can find that guy who was hanging around back then. And Gladys says--” Carol held out her hands, open, to Shane, Carmen and Lauren to answer.

“‘What guy hanging around?’” Lauren said.

“Exactly. What guy. ‘The Creep,’ I said. That’s what I called him. The Creep. See, the house behind your house was vacant at the time, and anyway, your backyard was almost as thick and fenced like Betsy and Dina’s, so you probably never knew your neighbor back there, either.”

“No, we didn’t,” Carmen said.

“But, see, that house is to me what Gladys’ house was to you guys, side by side, with only a driveway between us, like on your side, so I can see my next door house easily, see who is coming and going. So now I’ll come to the point. That house was vacant. It was owned by somebody in the military, and they got sent overseas somewhere for a while, and the house was for sale for a while, but then the owners took it off the market. So what I’m telling you is the house was vacant for, oh, I don’t know, nine or ten months, maybe longer. And I knew the people who owned it slightly, and I kind of kept an eye on it for them. And when it was up for sale, some real estate people would come by once in a while and show it to somebody, and either Jerry or I would see them and everything was okay. And then one day this big work truck pulls into their driveway and there’s this guy, he goes into the house, and he’s some kind of workman. We kind of keep an eye on him and an hour or two later he leaves, it didn’t look like he stole anything. He’s got some tools and stuff. I don’t know if he was a plumber, or electrician or what.”

“Any name or logo on the truck?” Lauren asked.

“No, that’s the thing. Just a plain panel truck, white.”

“Of course,” Lauren said. “A white panel truck. Just our luck. When was this?”

“The end of summer, I think.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“Then a few days later he comes back,” Carol said. “He walks around the house, he goes into the back yard. He’s not trying to hide or anything, he doesn’t seem to care if anybody sees him. Maybe he’s some kind of maintenance guy, I don’t know. But we start seeing him on a regular basis, or at least we don’t see him but we see the truck in the driveway. And here’s the thing. This isn’t nine-to-five hours, because Jerry and I aren’t home that much. We see the truck in the evening, sometimes late, it’s there when we go to bed. Sometimes it’s there first thing in the morning. It’s there on weekends.”

“What’s this guy look like?” Lauren asked.

“Tall, maybe six foot, six two, something like that. White, or Caucasian, anyway, but maybe even Latino, but if so, not obviously Hispanic. Maybe yes, maybe no. Probably in his mid-fifties, but it was hard to tell. He always wore a baseball hat and sunglasses, and when the weather got cooler sometimes a hoodie and sunglasses. One time Jerry made a joke, and called him the Unabomber. You know that police artist sketch of the Unabomber guy? Like that.”

“So you don’t know hair color? Eye color, anything like that?”

“Nope. When he wore the baseball hat he might have had darkish hair but hard to tell. I mean, he could have been totally bald under the baseball hat, I’d never know.”

“Tattoos? Any distinguishing marks?”

“Nothing we could see.”

“The sunglasses? Anything about them?”

“Not really. Those tinted aviator types, that’s all.”

“Only a couple million men in California wearing them,” Lauren said. “How did he dress?”

Carol shrugged. “Like some kind of workman. Jeans, usually, or work khakis. In January, February, he had on a jacket or a sweatshirt most times.”

“Any logos on the sweatshirts or jackets?”

“Once, some kind of patch or logo, but I couldn’t see it from my house. Dark blue sweatshirt, white patch, maybe a school. But could have been anything. One of the baseball hats might have been a Dodgers cap.”

“That narrows it down,” Lauren said, smiling. “What was his build? Fat? Thin?”

Carol laughed. “Medium. I know, big help, like the hat.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again? Think you could pick him out of a line-up?”

“Not in a million years,” Carol said, “not unless he was the Unabomber. You gotta remember, half the time it was night, or getting dark, or he was turned away from us, or just too far away, like on the other side of the house, or whatever.”

“And you never got a license number of the truck?”

“No. I mean, he went in and out like he had permission, he had tools and stuff. Or at least what looked like some tools.”

“But you told us you called him The Creep. Why was that?”

“Because a couple time he was in the back yard, at night. The first time I was a little startled, he was walking around out back, near the hedge and the back fence. And then he lit a cigarette and walked around smoking it, so I figured he just didn’t want to smoke in the house, or wasn’t allowed to, or whatever. So he’d take a smoke break and come out back. And he’d poke around at the hedges and fence, like he was looking at Jenny’s house, your house,” Carol said, looking at Shane.

“But something made you feel creepy,” Lauren said.

Carol sighed. “Jerry thinks I’m crazy,” she said.

“Because…?”

“I used to worry that he was spying on us. Our bedroom faces that house, you know? And our bedroom window faces out on the driveway there.”

“So does ours,” Shane said. Carmen said nothing, but remembered the time she had moved in with Shane and re-painted Jenny’s bedroom, naked, and was seen by Bette and Tina from their kitchen window.

“So anyway, I was always careful about pulling the curtains whenever I was getting dressed or when we went to bed,” Carol said. “And it wasn’t like Jerry and I ran around naked all the time or anything, but we didn’t. But Jerry would tease me, you know, sometimes when we were going at it, he’d say, ‘I hope The Creep isn’t watching us.’ And that would creep me out a little. And then there’s one other thing.”

“What’s that?” Lauren asked.

“I feel foolish even telling you this. I have no proof whatsoever. It’s just something … weird.”

“Okay.”

“The house next door? It’s two stories, like ours. I think … this is what Jerry teases me about. I think The Creep used to go up to the second-story back bedroom, at night, in the dark, without the lights on, and look out the back bedroom window.”

“Why do you think that?”

“One night, Jerry wasn’t home. I needed to take some garbage out to the trash cans. We keep them around back, you know? So it was late, like maybe 11 o’clock, and I go out the back door and I forget to turn on the back light, and it’s dark, but I know right where the trash can is, and I go put the smelly garbage in it, and I don’t know why, but I look up at the house and the back bedroom window facing Jenny’s house, and, I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining it. But I think I see somebody up there looking out the window, but like I say, it’s dark, and there’s no light on in that bedroom, in fact, the entire house is completely dark, every room.”

“Was the truck there?”

“Yes,” Carol said. “I looked, because I was creeped out. The truck was there, the house was dark, and I thought I saw somebody looking out the back window. Jerry says I’m crazy, but you know, he’s a guy, and that’s how they are. But you know how sometimes you know something, and you get the crazy vibes and you don’t know why? I think The Creep was looking out that back bedroom window. I can’t prove that, or even offer a shred of evidence. But there is also no doubt he was in the house at that time, and all the lights were off. So draw your own conclusions. He was inside somewhere, and in the dark.”

Lauren got up and went out onto the back patio of Gladys’ house, and looked over at the house Carol was talking about. The fence that surrounded Bette and Tina’s backyard was tall, and both backyards had a lot of plants and small trees. But from where Lauren stood, you could look over all the shrubbery and you could see the back of that house, which had two windows facing Jenny and Shane’s house. If you went further into the backyard, near the swimming pool, the view was blocked. Lauren understood that Bette, Tina and their friends could and did skinny-dip in the pool, and couldn’t be seen in the pool from either of the two houses in back. But Jenny and Shane’s old residence was different. First, there was the garage back there that Tim had converted to a studio and sometime guest bedroom when he and Jenny moved in. From the second story of The Creep House – as Lauren had now begun to think of it -- on the other side, you could look over the studio and onto the porch area of Jenny’s house. You could look into its kitchen. If it was night and the kitchen lights were on, you could probably see who was in there. You could see the driveway between the two.

Carmen, Shane, Gladys and Carol came out and stood on the patio, too, and looked at The Creep House. “Anybody live there now?” Lauren asked.

“Yes, the military people came back from deployment. They are nice people, quiet. I know them to say hello to. But they were gone nearly a year and don’t know anything about any workman being there, and they didn’t even know about Jenny’s murder until some relative of theirs asked them if they knew about a murder in their neighborhood.”

“You talked to them about all this?” Lauren asked.

“Yes, sure,” Carol said.

Lauren nodded, turned and walked up the stairs to the deck where Jenny had stood just a few seconds before she died. Carmen walked up the stairs and stood next to Lauren.

“Fuck,” she said. “If you’re in that house, you can see everything.”

“Yep,” Lauren said.

“I lived next door for eight months and never noticed,” Carmen said.

“Did you ever fuck on the back patio?” Lauren asked quietly, so the others couldn’t hear.

“No. That was probably the only place we didn’t,” Carmen whispered.

“Well, then, there you go. You never noticed because you had no reason to ever notice.”

The deck was on the same upper level as the second story of The Creep House, and even though it was diagonally opposite, it took almost no effort to see the two back windows of the Creep House, and from the Creep House to see the deck of Glady’s house. It was also clear that it was possible to see the back porch of Jenny and Shane’s house. It was easy to see who was coming and going out of both back doors of both houses, even if you couldn’t see into the pool area of Bette and Tina’s house.

Shane walked up the stairs and stood next to them. “Okay, now this is creeping me out, too. Was somebody watching us?”

Lauren shrugged. “Looks like it. At least, it certainly seems possible. The sight lines all work out.”

“Who? And why?”

“Let’s break it down into parts,” Lauren said. “First, I’m perfectly prepared to believe what Carol says, that there was some sort of workman in and out of the house over some period of time. I’m sure her husband will confirm it, and there’s probably other people on that street who will, too. It’s a bit of shoe leather and due diligence on my part tracking it down and getting confirmation, but that’s just part of my job description. The second part is, who was that person and why was he there? Perhaps there is some innocent explanation. Maybe he was some sort of handyman or repairman. Maybe he was some sort of squatter.”

“Is that what you think?” Shane asked.

“Not in a million years,” Lauren said.

“Oh,” Shane said.

“Then there’s the third part,” Lauren said. “He wasn’t a squatter or handyman, and yes, it was some sort of surveillance post. Maybe he was FBI or CIA and there was an ISIS or al Qaeda cell across the street, and he wasn’t looking out the back window at you guys but out the front.”

“An ISIS cell,” Carmen said. “Do we believe that?”

“Also not in a million years. I’m just laying out the possibilities, as ridiculous or improbable as they might seem.”

“Gotcha.”

“Next part. It was a surveillance outpost, and yes, it was facing this way, not across the street. So, who was being watched? Jenny? Shane? Jenny AND Shane as a unit? Bette? Tina? Bette and Tina as a unit? Or, I suppose, all four of you. And, of course, why? Let’s break it down, Shane first, because you’re the easiest.”

“Because I’m a suspect?” Shane asked.

“No, quite the opposite. You’re easiest because you’re the least likely of the four to be watched for some reason. No offense meant, but you were a hairdresser. Nobody stalks a hairdresser. Granted – and how can I put this diplomatically? – you had a long and active sex life, and let’s say somewhere along the line you acquired some crazed lesbian lover, or somebody you rejected, or somebody whose feelings you hurt, blah blah. Okay, but think about it. If there was some crazed lesbian ex, why would your stalker be a male, middle-aged handyman, and why would he watch you for a month or two, but do nothing?”

“I actually did have an ex-lover stalker, once,” Shane said. “It was a long time ago, though.”

Lauren looked at Shane. “You’re giving me a migraine,” she said. “Carmen, stop laughing.”

“I’m laughing because I kinda stalked Shane myself. That’s kind of how we got together. And didn’t you stalk her, too?”

Lauren looked at both of them. “Look, you both seem like nice people. Don’t make me fucking shoot you. Marybeth wouldn’t mind, but then I’d have to clean my gun.”

Carmen laughed. “Okay, sorry, sorry, let’s get back on track.”

Lauren agreed. “But now you’ve forced me to have to ask, Shane, is there any possibility you can think of why anyone would be stalking you? Somebody from your past? Other than Carmen, here, was there anyone who wanted to slit your throat?”

Carmen grinned and turned her head away.

Shane looked at Carmen, frowning.

“Don’t look at her, she has an alibi,” Lauren said. “She was a thousand miles out to sea.”

Shane sighed.

“Seriously,” Lauren said, “was there anybody you pissed off? Any enemies? Even going back months or years? Somebody who would have stalked you for some reason? Molly? You say Mollie’s mom wasn’t happy with you. What was the name of the woman you think burned down Wax? Paige something? Anybody from the movie studio? Not necessarily someone who would do it himself or herself, but someone who could hire somebody to do it?”

Shane closed her eyes and gave it serious thought. Mollie? No. Hell, no. Mollie’s mom, Phyllis Kroll? No point; Molly was doing her internship in Washington, and Shane had no contact with either of them. Veronica Bloom? True, she was a full-blown psycho. But hire a stalker? Why now? What for? No. Paige? No, no money, and no motive. Cheri Peroni? Cherie Peroni’s husband? Shane hadn’t had contact with them for years.

“I guess I’ve had my share of disturbed people,” Shane said, “but no, nobody who would stalk me or hire somebody to watch me.”

“What about Dawn Denbo?” Carmen asked quietly.

“Oh, fuck,” Shane said. “That’s right.” She forgot to ask how Carmen knew anything about Dawn Denbo.

Lauren turned to Shane with a questioning look.

“Okay,” Shane said after a big sigh. “Here goes. Dawn Denbo was this crazy-ass psycho bitch who opened this lesbian bar called _SheBar_ , which she thought was in competition with _The Planet_.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Lauren said.

“Well, _SheBar_ was a pure nightclub,” Shane said, “but _The Planet_ , was, you know, a restaurant during the day and I guess at night, but wasn’t exactly a nightclub until later at night on weekends and when it had special events and stuff. And you know, we’d hang out there on Sundays and have brunch, and _SheBar_ wasn’t even open until, like, six or seven at night. _The Planet_ had a breakfast crowd, a lunch crowd, you know, all different kinds of people, and it wasn’t exclusively lesbian. I mean, I know people from out of town came in and ate lunch or dinner there and never knew it was a lesbian hangout. And, besides, both places were in West Hollywood, you know? So what the fuck do you expect? Half the town is gay, and just because there’s a bar or restaurant in West Hollywood doesn’t mean much. I mean, it doesn’t make it a lesbian bar or lesbian restaurant, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I understand,” Lauren said. “So what happened?”

Shane looked away, and Lauren waited her out. “I think I kinda fucked up,” Shane finally said.

Lauren and Carmen said nothing.

“Dawn had this girlfriend,” Shane said quietly, not making eye contact. ‘Everywhere they went, Denbo would introduce her, she’d say, ‘this is my lover, Cindi.’ That was like her full title, ‘my lover, Cindi.’ Not just Cindi, or not, you know, my girlfriend, or whatever. ‘My lover, Cindi.’

There was another uncomfortable silence.

“So anyway, one day, uh, Dawn and Cindi and me … .”

“Hooked up,” Lauren said.

“Yeah.”

“Shane,” Carmen said quietly, “would you be more comfortable if I summarized it all for Lauren?”

“I guess everybody told you all about it.”

“Of course. I kept in touch with everybody over the years, you already know that. And I’m not trying to be mean or bitchy or catty. I just know this is painful for you, and I can give Lauren the information she needs to know.”

“Okay,” Shane said.

“Good. So here we go,” Carmen said. “First off, Denbo’s a psycho, but you’ll see that later on. So Denbo, Cindi and Shane have a threesome, so far, no problem, in theory, consenting adults, blah blah. Then a few days later, MyLoverCindi invites Shane over to their house, and says Dawn will be there, too. Turns out that was a lie. Cindi wants to go one-on-one. At first Shane says no, she knows this is going to be a problem, but eventually she and MyLoverCindi do the deed. Somehow Denbo finds out about it, my guess is that Cindi actually told her, just to cause trouble, which is exactly what happened. But instead of Denbo going off on MyLoverCindi, who initiated the thing and actually had to talk Shane into it when Shane knew better, she goes off on Shane instead like it’s all Shane’s fault for seducing MyLoverCindi. She does it at the cast party at Shane and Jenny’s house, walks in uninvited, gets in Shane’s face, tells the whole crowd and half of West Hollywood that Shane fucked MyLoverCindi that afternoon, gets in Jenny’s face, gets in Kit’s face, and tells everyone World War III is about to begin, and she’s going to totally ruin _The Planet_. She hires somebody to set loose some rats inside _The Planet_ and calls the health department, which does an instant inspection and finds the rats. So now Kit is totally at war with Denbo, and she actually goes out and buys a gun, and is on the way to kill Denbo when Bette stops her, and Kit throws the gun away.”

“Jesus, I didn’t know that,” Shane said. “Kit had a gun?”

“I don’t think anybody knows about it but me.”

“How do you know about it?” Lauren asked.

“Kit called me and told me. She and I once had a pretty casual discussion about guns. She overheard me saying that I fired a gun a few times, and I had been to a pistol range. So after _The Planet_ got burgled, she wanted to buy a gun, and she called me up to ask what she should buy. The joke here is, even though I shot a gun a few times I’m no expert. But I was the only person Kit knew who had even the tiniest knowledge about guns, so she called me. It was the partially blind leading the blind.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I hardly knew anything, but what little I did know was that if she was serious about owning a gun, she needed to take some lessons. I said it was stupid having a gun but being ignorant about how to use it. So she took some lessons and went out and bought a gun. Big, fucking, .357 magnum. She took shooting lesson at a gun range with it.”

“So what happened?”

“When Kit found out Ivan sold 51 percent of _The Planet_ to Dawn and Cindi, she … well… she got a little crazy. Uh, I have a question here. If I tell you any more, could Kit get in legal trouble?”

“Did she break any laws? She fire the gun?”

“No.”

“Then she’s probably okay. But tell you what, whatever you want to tell me, I won’t get Kit in trouble even if she did something really minor. How’s that? Deal?”

“Deal,” Carmen said. “So anyway, Kit’s really pissed and upset, and she goes to _SheBar_ —“

“No!” Shane said.

“—she goes to _SheBar_ before it opens for the evening, and she’s standing there with the gun in her coat pocket, and she’s watching through the window. Dawn and some waitresses are doing stuff, setting up, and MyLoverCindi comes over to a table to set up and she looks out the window and sees Kit, and Kit sees her, and they look at each other, and Kit’s thinking about pulling out the gun and shooting Cindi … and her cellphone rings.”

“What? No shit?”

“It’s Bette, and she’s stuck in a meeting, and she asks Kit if she can run and pick up Angelica at her pre-school day care center. And that was it. Kit comes to her senses, realizes where she is and what she’s thinking, and turns around and walks away.”

“She never drew the gun?” Lauren asked. “Cindi never knew she came within a hair’s breath of getting shot?”

“No. But here’s maybe the weirdest thing of all. Kit says they made eye contact, you know? They just looked at each other. And Kit thinks Cindi suddenly got conscience, and felt bad about what she and Dawn had done to her. Because then a few days or weeks later, Cindi does a turn-around. She gets mad at being Dawn’s MyLoverCindi punching bag, and sells her share of _The Planet_ to Helena. So bang, just like that the crisis is over, and Kit is back in charge of _The Planet_ and Helena’s a hero once again.”

“What happened to Dawn and MyLoverCindi?”

“I don’t know,” Carmen said. “Somebody said they split up. I have no idea whatever happened to them. Shane, do you know?”

“No, this is all new information to me,” Shane said. “I mean, I know about Helena buying Cindi’s share, and Kit getting _The Planet_ back and all that. But I don’t know whatever happened to Dawn and Cindi themselves.”

Lauren didn’t say anything, but she made a mental note. She had learned Carmen kept in touch with her friends and knew what was happening in their lives. But Carmen really really knew what was going on in their lives, to the point she knew who Shane was having threesomes with. Carmen knew things about the Friends that even some of the Friends didn’t know. She realized some of the Friends would tell things to Carmen they wouldn’t say to each other, and the reason was Carmen lived almost 400 miles away. She was their confessor, the one they admitted their innermost thoughts, secrets, desires, fears and sins to. It made Carmen and her insights more valuable than ever. Ironically, it was Shane who had the reputation of being one who could keep a secret, of being discreet. Carmen was the one with the quick tongue who would occasionally blurt out something she shouldn’t. But by and large, she could go toe-to-toe with Shane in the secret-keeping class. And she would know much better than Shane what to do with information, when to parcel it out, and when to say nothing, unless she was pissed. Good to know.

“Does this mean we add Dawn to our list of suspects?” Carmen asked. “She was mainly pissed at Kit and Shane, not Jenny. She didn’t know who Jenny was the night she crashed the party.”

“That’s true,” Lauren said, “but it’s possible she went to the farewell party to see someone else, and Jenny was the first person she ran into, on the stairwell or out on the deck. Jenny says, ‘What are you doing here? Go away, bitch,’ and Denbo pushes her off the deck. It’s not premeditated, and Jenny isn’t even Denbo’s intended target, if she had one. But Jenny was the one who got in her way.”

“I can see that happening,” Carmen said.

Lauren sighed. “Okay, we put another one on our list.”

“What about MyLoverCindi?” Carmen asked. “Think she was there, too?”

They all thought about it.

“No, no way,” Shane said. “If she was, she’d have reacted to Dawn killing Jenny. Anyway, there’s one major thing wrong with this scenario.”

“What’s that?” Lauren asked.

“Yelling. Screaming. There’s just no way Dawn Denbo runs into Jenny on the deck or the stairs, and all of West Hollywood doesn’t hear about it, instantly.”

“That’s a good point,” Lauren said. “It does seem apparent to me that whoever killed Jenny, Jenny was being complicit in keeping things quiet until it was too late.”

“So where are we with Denbo?”

Lauren thought. “I think Shane’s right about the yelling, and we’re all right about a misdirected motive. But I’ll keep her on the list at least until I can make a phone call or two, and find out where she was.”

“Due diligence,” Carmen said.

‘Exactly. But I’m just not getting any vibe on Dawn Denbo. Now, let’s talk about everybody else. First, Bette. What was going on in her life in the months before the murder. Outside of stuff inside the group, I mean.”

Carmen and Shane looked each other to see who would answer. It fell to Carmen. “Well, they were negotiating with somebody about an adoption, but it fell through. I don’t see anything there. In an adoption you want to do a background check, and all, but you don’t hire somebody to watch a house for a few months. Beyond that, Tina was negotiating with people about her getting that job in New York. But once again, nothing there that justifies a stalker. Bette had been having, uh, relationship problems with Jodi and then the thing about Kelly Wentworth, but those were resolved before the stalking thing started, and in any case there was nothing to stalk about. So I say no, nothing with Bette or Tina.”

“That leaves Jenny, and we’re right back where we started anyway. Niki and Jenny being blackmailed. Jenny being watched. And again, back where we started, being blackmailed, being watched, and being murdered. No fucking way those are three separate things. Being blackmailed and being killed was too much. Now we just add the stalker.”

“We’re spinning our wheels,” Shane said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Lauren said. “We’re doing productive work. We’re just clearing away all the irrelevant stuff. We’re clearing other suspects, you among them.”

Shane shrugged. “Okay, I see that.”

Carmen was staring at the back lot lines and fences, and The Creep House. “Lauren,” she said.

“Yes, Detective Grasshopper? I can see the wheels turning in your brain.”

“Niki was found hiding back there.”

“Yes. And?”

“Where exactly was she hiding? And how did she get there?”

Lauren thought about it for a minute. “Shit,” she finally said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“What?” Shane asked. “I thought we suspected Niki came here with Adele.”

“We did, but that’s not what Detective Grasshopper means. She means, how did Niki get into Bette and Tina’s backyard. So she alone or she with Adele parked a block or two away. That’s not the problem. The problem is, how did Niki get into the backyard from the far street. I don’t see any way Niki or Niki and Adele came from your side, from your street. I don’t think with you guys all coming and going from both houses back and forth that Niki just walked up your driveway or Bette and Tina’s driveway, walked to the back, and hid out there. So how did Niki get back there, unseen by you guys?”

“And it goes one step further,” Carmen said.

“Yep,” Lauren said.

“I’m dense. Explain it to me,” Shane said.

“You’re not dense, but this isn’t your kind of problem-solving,” Carmen said. “The problem isn’t how did Niki get into the backyard that night. The problem is how did Niki do it twice.”

“Huh?”

“The night of the murder wasn’t the first time Niki was back there,” Carmen said. “She was here at least once before. Remember, she snuck into your house and put the negative canisters up in the attic. So when she did that, did she drive here and walk up to the house from the front and go in the front door, or walk down the driveway and go in the back door? I’m betting she didn’t. It would be beyond foolish for her to come and go out front, even if she knew you and Jenny weren’t home. I’m betting Niki came into your back yard from someplace in the back, from the far street, from the vicinity of that house where the stalker was.”

“The Creep House,” Lauren said. “That’s what I’m calling it.”

“Okay, cool. The Creep House. Niki walked down beside The Creep House, found a way into the backyard, went into your house through the back door to the kitchen, went to Jenny’s bedroom, and stashed the negatives in the attic. She came back the night of the party, used the same route, got into your backyard, Shane, and then into Bette and Tina’s backyard, somehow, and without being seen. Maybe Adele was with her, maybe not. But that’s twice Niki came here without being seen, through the backyard, somehow.”

“You fucking guys are making my head hurt,” Shane said. “What’s all that got to do with the man in The Creep House watching us?”

“Exactly,” Lauren said. “And there’s something else, even worse.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Shane murmured. “What.”

“If Jenny wasn’t murdered by any of you guys at the farewell party, then she was murdered by somebody else. Right?”

“Right.”

“So how did the killer get into the backyard, and how did the killer escape undetected.”

“Isn’t the killer Niki?” Shane asked.

“No, not necessarily. Remember, we still have a middle-aged male stalker in The Creep House, and we still have an unsub blackmailing both Jenny and Niki. I think we can eliminate the possibility of Niki blackmailing herself. So it seems clear to me we still have an unsub, a third party who is neither Niki nor Adele. We just asked a minute ago, how did Niki get into the backyard without being seen? Remember? But maybe Niki was seen, just not by you guys. Maybe she was seen by the Creep, who was back there watching your house. He watched Niki get into your backyard not once, but twice.”

“You’re saying he watched Niki take the film canisters into Shane’s house?” Carmen asked.

“No, because maybe she carried them in a bag or something. But then she comes back out empty-handed. He says to himself, okay, what did she just take in? And what did she do with whatever it was?”

“So he goes into the house himself?”

“Maybe. Or he looks in the bedroom window, and sees Niki in the closet climbing the stairs to the attic. You guys know the house better than I do. Is that feasible? Can you look in that window and see into the closet?”

Carmen thought about it. “I don’t think you can see into the closet, but you can see someone going into it and then coming out of it, right, Shane?”

Shane nodded. “Sounds right. That was your bedroom, too, when you lived there.”

“So then what does the Creep do?” Carmen asked.

“He waits until Niki leaves, then he goes in, goes into the closet. He looks around.”

“And then he looks up,” Carmen said.

“He looks up, he pulls down the stairs, and he goes up and looks around. And he finds a bunch of film canisters labeled _Lez Girls_. Remember, he’s been watching Jenny for months, and he’s been blackmailing Jenny and Niki. So he already knows quite a lot about them, and about the movie. He knows who Niki is, and when he sees her taking what turns out to be the film canisters into the house, he understands the situation. He understands Niki is setting up Jenny.”

“And we also have somebody who murdered Max,” Carmen said.

“Right. And we’re back to the worst part of all,” Lauren said.

“Which is?” Carmen asked.

“The question I just posed. How did the killer get into the back yards, and how did he or she escape? Because you know what? The night of the murder? Nobody checked. Marybeth thought all the suspects were in the media room. She would have looked at how the killer got away pretty soon, except … Carmen?”

“Except Alice confessed, and fucked up a proper investigation, yet again. Alice didn’t go anywhere, so there was no get-away path escape route to investigate. ”

“Give that girl a gold star,” Lauren said.


	20. Memories. No Singing Cats.

“I think Richard and I are breaking up,” Chase said.

Shane had been looking out the car window at the lights of LA at night, but turned to look at Chase in the gloom of the back seat. Renaldo was driving. They were returning from a successful store opening and media event featuring a trendy new wine brought in from Sonoma, canapes, cheek brush air kisses, media, minor celebrities. It had been a long day, and they were both tired, coming down after the adrenaline rush.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Shane said. “I thought you guys were cool together. Getting along well, I mean. A lot of people have told me they admired your relationship.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s how things look from the outside,” Chase said quietly. “But shit happens. I don’t have to tell you that.”

“You want to talk about it?” Everyone, including Chase and Shane herself, knew Shane was never much good at relationships, but everyone who knew her well also knew that Shane was a good listener and good at diagnosing other people’s problems, just not her own. If you had the need to unburden yourself, to download all your tears, fears, and woes, to get a good, sound, outsider’s view, there were few people better to do it with than Shane McCutcheon. Even better, everyone knew she could keep a secret. A thousand women could attest to it, if necessary.

They were riding in the Albino Tabby, their nickname for the custom stretch limo Jaguar sedan Chase had commissioned to be their official staff car, working office, and status symbol of Shane’s Sugar Shack, LLC (a semi-secret division of Sweet Things Enterprises, but a widely known subsidiary of Chase-La Jolla Holding Group). In that modest empire, Shane’s Sugar Shack was but one spin-off, albeit a successful and highly visible one responsible for nearly twenty-two percent of all Chase-La Jolla’s gross income. After SSS LLC’s initial start-up costs had been amortized, SSS LLC never had a down quarter. They liked to call the company’s acronym “Trip-S, Two-L C” and sometimes just “Trip-S.”

“There’s something I need to run by you,” Chase had told Shane one day as Shane climbed into the back seat of the leased limo that had been using as their first mobile office. “I want us to buy our own stretch limo for our official vehicle for Shane’s Sugar Shack. Our leasing arrangement for the limos we’ve been using is fine as far as it goes, and we’ll still keep them for other uses, but since they don’t belong to us, we are limited on what models we can pick, what color choices we have, and the issue of logos and decals we can put on them.”

“Okay, so what do you have in mind?” Shane asked.

“Well, maybe you don’t know this, but I’ve always loved Jaguar sedans, with that Jaguar hood ornament, you know the one I mean?” Chase knew Shane didn’t know all that much about cars in general, and they barely registered on her radar.

“Yeah, I think so. I’ve seen them at some movie premiers and stuff. And I think I saw a convertible one once, some movie star was riding down Hollywood Boulevard in it.”

“Yes, that’s the one. I’ve seen that convertible, too, and I even thought about a convertible for us, but decided against it. We do too much paperwork in the car to be riding around with the top down, so we’ll need the hardtop.”

“Okay, sure, fine,” Shane said. “I’m guessing Jags are expensive, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but any really good status car is going to be expensive, and anyway, as you know by now, it’s a one-hundred-percent business expense for Trip-S. I just saw an ad for a used one that’s only sixty grand. That’s a pretty good price. What I want to do is have it painted off-off-white, just ever so slightly not true white, the color of sugar, not like brown sugar or cane sugar. When somebody asks what that color is, we say it’s refined sugar, because that’s who we are. We are refined. What we do is for refined people. And I want to have the Trip-S logo on the doors on each side, so people can tell from a distance whose car it is. I want people to see it and say, ‘Hey, that’s Shane McCutcheon’s ride, and she’s here.’”

“I get the PR angle, the color and the logo, and all,” Shane said. “but I’m still not comfortable being some kind of fucking celebrity.”

“I know you’re not,” Chase said, “and that’s one of your best qualities. You never let Hollywood go to your head. That means you’re still down-to-earth and approachable. That’s why so many people like you, and trust you with the single most private, intimate, personal grooming decisions women could possibly make, which is how they trim their pussies. Who they trust to do that work. That’s you, that’s Shane McCutcheon. One of the few people in Hollywood who can keep a secret, such as whether rising-starlet flavor-of-the-month Brianca Poutyface has a landing strip or a thunderbolt, or a hairy asshole. They know you’re not going to go on Twitter and tell the world. In Hollywood, that’s a really big fucking deal. Keeping their secret is money in our bank account.”

So Chase bought the stretch Jag and had the SSS LLC logo put on the rear passenger doors, large enough to see it was there, but not so large and gaudy it detracted from the classiness of the car. From a distance it looked like it might be a shield or a family crest of some sort, but when you got closer you could see it was the standard black-on-white Shane’s Sugar Shack logo, which featured a simple pen-and-ink sketch of a shabby-chic shack with a tin roof in the background, and in the foreground in front of the shack was a bag of sugar on its side, with some sugar spilling out into a small pile. “SSS” was printed on the bag. To the left side was what at first appeared to be a vertical black bar, but on closer inspection it was revealed to be a tightly woven mat, wiry and curly. In fact, it was a brunette landing strip, but you had to know that; it could have been nearly anything. Underneath was the name “Shane’s Sugar Shack” in a classy script.

“The other great thing about the Jag,” Chase had said, “is the symbolism of the hood ornament.”

“What about it? Shane asked.

“Come on, Shane,” Chase laughed. “It’s a smooth, sleek, hairless pussy.”

* * *

“Is breaking up your idea, or Richard’s, or mutual?” Shane asked.

“Richard’s. You know what he says? I know you’ll never guess. He says I work too much. I’m a workaholic, I’m never home. I don’t pay any attention to our relationship. I work all day long, then I got to all these business events at nights, I work weekends, my head is always in one business problem or another. The phone never stops ringing. I never take him along with me, because he doesn’t want to go to all these social functions, and he could care less about the business stuff. He’s bored to death by it, and by the people I work with. And here’s the great big cosmic joke. Every word he says is true. Every fucking word.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane said, having nothing else to add. She knew it was all true, that Chase was one hundred and fifty percent invested in his job, his work, his corporations. He had inexhaustible energy. He was brilliant and creative. He was decisive. He was great to work with. He took care of his people. He was decent and kind, thoughtful, funny, charming. He sometimes worked 18-hour days. The weekend was just two more working days, days when people who had 9-to-5 weekday jobs could come in to Shane’s Sugar Shack for a little trim and some “me” time. Chase was just a lousy spouse, that’s all, like a million other Type A career-driven, ambitious go-getters in California, male, female, straight or gay.

“That’s kind of what happened to Harvey and Jack, way back when,” Shane said. “Harvey was a terrific guy, but he was totally into his career, the orchestra, and always on the road. And one day Jack went down to the beach in Malibu and walked into the ocean and never came back.”

“I think about your friend Harvey sometimes,” Chase said, “and I see the parallels. I see it in dozens of people I run across. All us high-achievers with great, successful careers of all kinds, and horrible, self-destructive personal relationships. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I have yet to see somebody successfully work his way out of the hole. I have yet to see somebody like me or Harvey pull up in time, get effective counseling, repair their relationship. I know some who’ve tried, but it never worked out in the end. They cut back a little on their businesses, and the business starts to decline. They cut back on meetings and events, and they get bored and they start missing the action. They don’t want to go for long walks in the rain and browsing in antiques stores, they want to get back to their desks and cellphones, their meetings and deals before the business goes into the dumper. They can’t wait to get back to the rush.”

“It’s an addiction,” Shane said. “Adrenal rush.”

“It truly is,” Chase said, “only there’s no 12-step group for us.”

“Maybe that should be your next business venture,” Shane said, half seriously.

Chase laughed in the darkness of the back seat. “Right. We could call it the Letting Go Intervention Society. How to give up everything you’d worked your ass off for fifteen or twenty years in ten easy, minimally self-destructive steps, and sink to the bottom of the shark tank like guppy poop. All the Hollywood movers and shakers will be lined up around the block trying to get an appointment. Not.”

“It might work out okay. They’d send their minions and flunkies to get the appointment,” Shane said, “and then they’d send their AA’s and executive assistants to actually attend the classes and bring them back the notes and summaries. The minions could scale back and drop to the bottom of the tank on their behalf, and the big shots would just get new minions.”

“Right, right,” Chase laughed. “And then they tell their new assistants to send flowers to their significant others. Then they schedule ninety minutes of quality time at Spago for a week from next Thursday. And then when the spouse or significant other sneaks out to get laid by somebody who pays attention to them, the high-achiever is totally mystified.”

They lapsed into silence until finally Shane asked, “So, is he moving out?”

“I don’t know. We’re talking. Put ‘talking’ in quotes. Discussing things. Getting in touch with our feelings. He suggested we get counseling.”

“What did you say?”

“I managed not to laugh sarcastically.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t easy. I think I pulled it off.”

Shane looked out the window in psychoanalysis mode. “You sound like you might be happy to break up,” she said.

“I know,” Chase said. “You know what word I hate? The word ‘ambivalent.’ I’m pretty far from an ambivalent guy. But I’m ambivalent about this.”

“I really hate to ask—“

“But you want to ask, is there somebody else? Is he cheating? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. He says not, and I believe him. And maybe it doesn’t even matter. At least he knows goddamn well I’m not cheating on him. Too fucking busy.”

There was another long silence until Chase asked, “Okay, doctor, what’s your diagnosis?”

“It’s over,” Shane said. “I’m sorry, but it is. I hate to be the one to tell you--”

“—but I already know you’re right, and I’ve already admitted as much to myself.”

“Yes.”

Chase sighed. “I know what I really ought to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Marry you.”

Shane guffawed and Chase laughed, too. “I already have lunch or dinner with you three, four times a week,” Chase said. “We go to cocktail parties, mixers, or wine-and-cheese things at least twice a week. I spend way more time with you than I do with Richard. We like each other. We make each other laugh. I can talk to you, and you to me. We have great communication. We know and accept each other’s faults and peccadilloes without judgment. I mean, we’re just about the perfect couple already. And as for sex, lately, I’ve been getting zero from both of you.”

Shane laughed. “Of course, you’ve never gotten any sex from me. At least you used to have a sex life with Richard, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, once upon a time.”

Shane said nothing.

“It was okay, our sex life,” Chase said quietly.

“I didn’t ask,” Shane said.

“No. But it was the logical next question.”

They rode in silence for a while.

“You know who you should have married?” Chase finally asked. “Carmen. I liked Carmen. Carmen was a keeper.”

“I know. I fucked it up. Not the same as you fucking it up with Richard. I did it entirely differently. But I fucked it up.”

“She ever get over it?”

“No, not at all. She’s civil, you know, she talks to me and all. And there’s this kind of truce between us while we do this investigation thing, trying to get Alice out and find out who really killed Jenny. But yeah, there’s this edge she has. It gets chilly. I think the day this investigation ends she could very well cut my throat and walk away smiling.”

“That’s pretty harsh. And it doesn’t sound like the Carmen I knew.”

“Maybe it is harsh, I don’t know. And you know that I’m not exactly real good at saying the right thing. I made a half-assed apology to her, and she said she accepted it, sort of, but I was horrible at it, and I’m still not sure she was telling the truth when she accepted it. She was like, yeah, whatever.”

“That doesn’t sound like her,” Chase said.

“What do you mean?”

“Lying to you. Saying she accepted your apology but not meaning it.”

“No, I guess not. The thing is, I used to be able to read her pretty well. Now I can hardly read her at all.”

“Can I ask a difficult question?”

Shane sighed. “I know what you’re going to ask.”

“Okay. So what’s the answer? Do you still have feelings for her?”

“You’re asking the last fucking person on planet Earth who would know the answer to that. I barely knew I had feelings for her back when I did have feelings for her. Uh, does that sentence makes sense?”

“No, not at all, but I know what you were trying to say.”

“Good, at least one of us understands me.” She let a beat go by. “How long have you and Richard been together?”

“About four years, I guess.”

“Not too bad, I guess, for Hollywood. Maybe about average. Anyway, way longer than any of my relationships.”

Renaldo turned the car onto Santa Monica Boulevard, and Shane looked out the window to the street corner where she had once upon a time been a prostitute giving hand jobs to chickenhawks for twenty bucks a jerk. Now she rode in an off-white custom stretch Jag with Renaldo behind the wheel, a healthy bank account creeping into seven-figure range, a reputable career and the respect of her friends and colleagues. Somehow she had survived, she had made it, and if she didn’t fuck it up, she was set for the rest of her life. There was only just the one thing missing, and to tell the truth, Shane wasn’t sure she ever missed it. No significant other. Nobody waiting for her at home in Alice’s old apartment. Nobody to snuggle with at night, nobody to tell about how your day went. Nobody to laugh with, or cry with, if it came to that. Well, except Chase. Sex was never an issue; Shane could always get any amount of sex, almost at the snap of her fingers, and she still did, regular as a morning cappuccino. But it was everything else that went with relationships. “My relationships,” she had just said.

Relationships, plural, and not the one-night stands. Shane thought to ask herself how many there had been. On the one hand, she was surprised there had ever been any at all. On the other hand, there had been … uh… let’s see, how many? Tiffy, but Tiffy doesn’t count, they were only nine years old at the time. I guess the first had to be Cheri Peroni, she thought. That one was difficult to categorize. It met the definition of a relationship, but there was no love in it, no affection. Certainly no romance, in any conventional sense. There was fucking, and manipulation, and above all no future whatsoever. Was it a “relationship” at all, or just a one-night-stand that lasted a month or two with a couple of auxiliary three-ways with Becky thrown in for good measure?

Then there was Carmen. No question, _that_ was a relationship. But definitionally, was it her first true relationship, or her second? Who gives a shit? Okay, yes, dammit, her first true relationship. Serious. So start counting with Carmen at Number One. Because there was love. There, she said it. There had been love. No question about it from Carmen’s side; that was love-at-first-sight, to hear her tell it. It just took Shane a long time to face up to it, understand that’s what this feeling was, what love looked like. Let’s don’t even think about all the ways she managed to screw it up. It was love, and it lasted eight months until Shane made it crash and burn.

And then, inevitably, there were the Carmen look-alikes. In the years since the disaster in Whistler, there had been several hundred women, and twice that many partnered orgasms. It was statistically impossible that out of several hundred random lesbians a few had to have that luxurious dark hair, those hips, those breasts, that gorgeous, tasty, Latina skin tone. The laugh, the smile, the glint in the eye. The hunger, maybe, but of course not quite the skill level. At least a few of them had to resemble Carmen in some way. And there were: four one-night stands, two Latinas and two whose ethnic background was unknown. The last one had been a few months ago. She was the one who looked the most like Carmen, but whose personality was least like her. Carmen had been warm, bubbly, open, friendly. This last one, whose name was Sameen, had some Middle East in her, was quiet, intense, almost sullen. She didn’t want to talk, or drink, or go out to dinner, or do anything but fuck. When Sameen took off her clothes Shane was shocked by the scars on Sameen’s body. Some looked fresh and some well-healed. A couple of healed knife wounds, maybe, and something that looked like maybe a bullet hole. Some clean, neat scars that might have come from surgery, some ragged and amateurishly tied up. Some bruises. It wasn’t that Sameen didn’t mind when Shane ran her finger over a couple of them. It was that she just didn’t fucking care. No tats, of course, no flower boxes. Sameen fucked well, Shane might even have said “efficiently,” and in the morning she was gone. In the shower afterward, Shane realized Sameen Shea had been the anti-Carmen. Shea or Shaw, something like that. Shane had never been sure of the last name. Very similar appearance, both lesbians, both skilled in bed (but Carmen much more so, of course) … but a night-and-day difference in personality.

Paige. Another hard one to categorize, but yes, the relationship with Paige staggered across the definition finish line; there was affection there. Okay, love. Yes. Just say it. Never mind the complications and the fuck-ups. Above all, try to ignore the outcome, the arson of _Wax_. And not Shane’s first crazy one, by any means.

Molly. Molly, oh Molly, Molly, Molly. It was the first relationship in which Shane had been ahead of her partner. She had fallen for Molly before Molly had fallen for her. Fuck, why did she use the euphemism “falling for”? Why couldn’t she just fucking say it, I fell in love with her before she fell in love with me. There, was that so hard?

Yes.

Oh, fuck, whatever.

Then Jenny. Jesus, how to describe whatever that --- that “thing” – whatever it was, was. (Huh?) It wasn’t a relationship, it was a train wreck hit by an airplane crash after running into an iceberg. A person who had been a deeply valued friend and roommate for the better part of six years had gradually slipped into a kind of insanity, the culmination of which was a declaration of love for Shane. And Shane, possessor of all that exquisitely fine-tuned hyperacuity and sensitivity to other people’s moods and feelings, had been the iceberg, silent and unknowing and unfeeling and unable to get out of the way of what ran into her. Was any of it “love,” as anyone commonly understood the term? Did Jenny really and truly love Shane, romantically and sexually, or was it some sort of self-delusion? Was Jenny making it all up? Was she crazy? Did she need to go back to the Illinois funny hat factory for a tune-up? For that matter, did Shane?

Even now, Shane had no good idea of what had possessed her. All she knew for certain was that on the evening of Bette and Tina’s going-away party, she had climbed the pull-down stairs in Jenny’s closet, found the missing/stolen movie negatives, and found the missing/stolen letter from Molly. In that moment whatever the thing with Jenny had been, it was fucking over, fucking deader than those people whose ship had run into that iceberg.

And a little while later Alice had come into Bette and Tina’s media room on unsteady legs, and said, “Jenny!” and they had all run out to see what had happened and their lives had changed forever.

* * *

Sargent Marybeth Duffy told Shane she could go home about four the next afternoon after the murder and nearly 18 hours on intermittent interrogation and catnaps. “If you have any plans to leave LA County, cancel them. Don’t leave town. You can go to work, but don’t go anywhere without checking in with me. We’ll be in touch. I’m sure there will be a lot of follow-up questions.”

“Okay,” Shane said, left the homicide bureau, and drove home to an empty, haunted house guarded by a pimple-faced deputy sheriff cadet. Police cars and lab tech vehicles were still parked up and down the street. Shane had to show ID and was asked if it was possible if she could spend the night somewhere else? Shane said okay and went to her room to pack an overnight bag, making sure to include her marijuana stash and the oxy before the cops found it. There was crime scene tape blocking the door to Jenny’s bedroom, and she could see the light was on in the closet and the pull-down stairs were down. Someone was in the attic doing something forensic, but Shane didn’t care. Marybeth Duffy had Molly’s original note, but had made a photocopy of it in case Shane wanted to read it again (and again and again). There was nothing Shane could do about Jenny’s stash and her sex toys. Jenny was dead, and it didn’t matter.

I can’t sleep here tonight, and maybe never again, Shane thought. She drove to Alice’s house and sat down to smoke a badly needed joint. She smoked two more and fell asleep on the couch wondering when Alice would be released.

She was awakened the next morning by her cell phone ringing.

“Shane? You awake? It’s Tina. We’re all meeting at _The_ _Planet_. Get there as soon as you can.” Before Shane could reply Tina hung up. She looked around the apartment and saw that Alice still hadn’t come home.

Shane staggered into _The_ _Planet_ half an hour later, unshowered and barely dressed in sweat pants and an old T-shirt. She ordered her coffee at the counter and took it to the Friends table Kit always reserved for them. Bette, Tina and Helen were already there, also looking tired and haggard. “Hey,” she whispered as she sat down.

“Hey, you, too,” Helena said.

“Kit’s in the back, she’ll come out when we’re ready to talk,” Tina said. “Max texted he’s on the way.”

Shane grunted. “How’s Angelica? What time did you get home?”

“She’s fine,” Tina said. “They let us leave about three o’clock. We had to get permission to enter our own house and pack a bag. We weren’t allowed to stay because the lab techs and crime scene people were still crawling all over. We spent the night in a hotel.”

“I wasn’t allowed to stay, either,” Shane said. “I spent the night at Alice’s. Anybody know where she is? She still hasn’t come home.”

“Shane, we’ve got some bad news. Alice was arrested. Tasha called and told us. She says she was told Alice confessed. Tasha says she’s unlikely to get bail.”

Shane felt like she’d been run over by yet another train. “No fucking way,” was all she could say.

“Tasha said Duffy told her Alice has asked for and hired a lawyer Joyce Wischnia recommended, and there’s DA’s and people like that in and out. Tasha will be here soon.”

“No fucking way,” Shane repeated.

Kit came out of the kitchen and sat down. She had a cup of hot tea with the teabag steeping in it. “You okay, Shane?” she asked.

“I don’t even know how to answer that, Kit. I’m, like … I don’t know. Gob-smacked. It’s like some bad dream, some bad acid trip.”

“It’s like we’re all living inside the same nightmare,” Tina said. “I’m so conflicted about Jenny. A few hours ago I hated her guts, I wanted to wring her spoiled, sneaky, conniving neck for stealing my movie negatives. An hour later after I wanted her dead we’re pulling her body out of our pool.”

“I was pissed at her,” Helena said. “I wanted to kill her myself. And then … God help me, when I saw her in the pool and Bette and Shane jumped in, the first thought that crossed my mind was, ‘Good, I hope the bitch is dead.’ And then we saw she was, and I felt … I don’t know. Guilt, and joy and satisfaction, and horror, all at the same time. I felt like … it’s weird. I felt like I was the one who killed her only because I wanted her to be dead. And then I felt ashamed. I felt like shit.”

“That’s how I felt,” Bette said. “‘Good, the bitch is dead.’ But I’m in the water and I grabbed hold of her, and I’m, like, ‘Come on, Jenny, stop the drama queen shit, wake up.’ Shane and I have her and we get her to the side of the pool and hand her up to Tina and Helena and Max, and somehow I know she’s dead. And … it’s like … I remember, why don’t I feel bad about this? The fucking bitch is dead, good.’ Helena started CPR, but we knew immediately it was just too late. And now I feel horrible about how I felt. But ... I can’t lie. For a little while, I was glad she was dead.”

“I knew she was dead,” Shane whispered. “I don’t know how I knew, but the minute I saw her down there, I knew. And Bette was right in front of me, and we ran down the steps and we both jumped in. But I knew. Don’t ask me how.”

“I ran down the steps to the landing,” Kit said. “Alice and Max were standing there, looking down. And Max suddenly ran down the lower stairs and helped Helena and Tina pull her body out of the water. Alice was standing next to me, like, in shock. I remember looking at her, and she was trembling. She had her hands in front of her mouth, you know? And I ran back up the stairs into the house and got my cell phone and called 9-1-1.” She pulled her teabag out of the tea, pressed it into a spoon to drain a few drops of hot tea into her cup, and put the teabag on Bette’s coffee saucer. “Don’t ask me how, I knew she was dead, too.”

They looked up as Max came into _The Planet_ and sat down at the table. “Fucking cops,” she said. Nobody said anything, so she continued. “They question me for hours and hours. They let me take a piss, and there’s this detective, Sean, the one in the T-shirt, he’s watching me and I go into the stall and take my pants down to sit down and I know he’s standing here, and I come out and he’s got his arms folded and he’s just looking at me like I’m … I don’t know. Some kind of insect. And we go back in the interrogation room, and they make me go all through it again. Why did I hate Jenny. Why was I at the party. Who were Jenny’s friends. Who were her lovers. Was I her lover. Who was she fucking. Was she fucking Niki. Was she fucking Shane. When’s the last time I fucked her. When’s the first time I fucked her. Why were we in a mental hospital in Illinois. What was the name of the place. Who were the doctors who treated us. Why did Jenny try to commit suicide. I said she didn’t, she just cut herself. I had to explain what a cutter is. Why did I try to commit suicide. None of your fucking business, I said, it was seven years ago and has nothing to do with anything. Then they wanted to know about Carmen. How long were Carmen and Jenny fucking. Did I fuck Carmen, too. How long ago were they fucking. Where is Carmen now. What about Jenny’s husband. Did any of us fuck Jenny’s husband. Where is he now. Who is this guy Tom. Is he my boyfriend. Was he the father of my baby. Why did Tom hate Jenny. Did Jenny hate Tom. Was Jenny responsible for Tom leaving. Did Tom kill Jenny. Where was Tom. Why wasn’t he at the party. Did I kill Jenny. Maybe it was just an accident, I just pushed her and she fell off the deck. Did Shane kill Jenny. Did Shane and Jenny have a fight about something. What about Tina. What was the movie about. Then they go out into the hallway and talk to somebody and they come back in and ask me why Niki was there. I said I had no fucking idea Niki was there, she wasn’t invited to the party, and anyway, I barely even knew her, except I knew she was this actress in Jenny’s movie. Then they asked me again if she and Jenny fucked, and I said yes, for a couple of weeks, but then it stopped. Did I ever fuck Niki. Did Shane fuck Niki. Then they wanted to know about Shane and Jenny, and was I pissed that Jenny was sleeping with Shane and was that why I pushed her off the deck.”

Max stopped. She had run out of steam. It was probably the longest speech she had made in her entire life.

“Fuckers. Finally, the butch one, Marybeth, she comes in and says you can go home now, but don’t leave LA without telling us. And I say that’s it? I’m free to go? What happened? And she says, ‘We have a suspect under arrest. I can’t tell you anything more right now. We’ll be in touch.’” She looked around the table. “Was it Niki? Did they arrest Niki? Did she kill Jenny?”

No one said anything.

“Guys, come on,” Max said.

“They arrested Alice,” Tina said.

Max stared at her. “Alice?”

Tina nodded.

“No fucking way,” Max said.

“Amen,” Kit

“Alice did it?”

“That’s what they say,” Tina said. “Tasha’s coming. We think she’ll have more information.”

“It’s bullshit,” Shane whispered. “It’s bullshit.” She folded her arms on the table in front of her and put her head down, face hidden. She may have been crying. Tina reached out a hand and rubbed Shane’s shoulder blade.

A waitress stopped by the table. “Anybody need anything?” she asked quietly. Kit looked around the table. Bette and Helena nodded no. “We’re good, thanks, Josie,” Kit said quietly.

They sat in silence until Tasha arrived. She was dressed in baggy camo pants and a sleeveless olive drab fatigues T-shirt, leftovers from her Army career, such as it was. Her hair was pulled back in a bun. “It’s not good,” was the first thing she said.

Shane lifted her head up. “There’s no fucking way,” she said.

Tasha looked at her. “I know.”

“Tell us,” Bette said quietly.

Tasha shrugged. “Yesterday afternoon Alice confessed. Voluntarily. No coercion, no police bullshit. They didn’t beat it out of her, none of that TV crap. She was Mirandized and advised of rights, all that stuff. And she apparently said, sure, fine, okay. Then she talked for a bit, said she did it, and could she now call a lawyer? She called Joyce, Bette and Tina’s lawyer, and apparently Joyce got somebody else. Last night about nine o’clock they let me talk to her for about two minutes, with the lawyer and Marybeth and Sean, Marybeth’s partner, all in the room. The lawyer’s name is Drinkwater, I have his card.”

“What did Alice say?” Tina asked.

“Well, it’s even worse than you might think,” Tasha said, “but not in the way you think.”

“I don’t follow,” Tina said.

“Tell us what she said, Tasha,” Bette said quietly.

“I walk into the room and Alice says, ‘Hey, hi, Tasha,’ like we’re in a bar at happy hour. She’s all cheery and friendly. I say, ‘How are you, Alice?’ and she says, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. How are you?’ and I say, ‘Alice, what’s going on?’ And she’s still all happy and cheery and friendly, and it’s like she doesn’t know or care one bit her lawyer’s there, and two homicide detectives, and she’s being taped and recorded and she knows it and doesn’t give a flying fuck. I mean, it’s like she’s high, or manic. And she says, ‘I killed Jenny last night. I pushed her off the deck at Bette and Tina’s house, and she fell on her head and died and I rolled her into the pool.’ And I said something like, you know, ‘Why? What happened?’ And she says, ‘Well, you know what a sneaky bitch she was. She stole my screenplay treatment. She got half a million dollars for it, and she stole it from me. The bitch had it coming.’ And see, she’s still happy and smiling, and talking in a normal tone of voice and all, I know at that point she’s just totally out of her mind, or something. And I just get this vibe, I know she’s sitting there lying her ass off and telling this crazy story. And I look at Sergeant Duffy and Sean, and they are, you know, stone-faced, I can’t read them and they don’t say anything, and I look at her lawyer, and he looks at me and shrugs. I mean, that’s what he does. It’s like he’s saying, ‘What can I do? I don’t believe her any more than you do or the detectives do.’ I know sure as shit he’s told her to shut up and not say anything, but she’s ignoring him. And we’re all standing there, and Alice says, ‘I’m being arraigned tomorrow, but I don’t want any of the gang to come. Please, tell them not to be there, okay? I’ll be fine. Tell them I love them all, and thanks for being my friends, and I’ll see them in ten to twenty.’ That’s like her joke, right? Ten to twenty. And I say, ‘Alice, don’t do this,’ and she just smiles at me. ‘Tash,’ she says ‘it’ll all work out. Trust me. I did it. Jenny had it coming. Tell Shane she can have my apartment, and please take care of my car. And I say, ‘Alice, you cray cray, girl,’ and she laughs. ‘Tash,’ she says, ‘I know you’ll make a great cop. Have a great career, and keep your head down and be safe.’ And this tear rolls…”

Tasha stopped. She took a moment. “This tear rolls down her cheek, but she’s still smiling, see, and I can’t talk, I’m all choked up. I nod, and Marybeth opens the door for me, and they let me give Alice a hug, and then I’m down the hallway and out of the building and sitting in my car and I’m crying like a baby. And I don’t fucking cry. I don’t fucking cry.”

Kit got up, walked behind the counter and returned a minute later with a cappuccino that she sat down in front of Tasha.

“Thanks, Kit,”

“On the house, darlin’” Kit said.

“I’ve got more information, if you want it,” Tasha said.

“Okay,” Bette said.

“Arraignment’s today, one o’clock, but she doesn’t us there. The lawyer, Drinkwater, he’ll be getting in touch with all of us in the next couple of days. Marybeth thinks Jenny’s autopsy will be Tuesday. Since they have a suspect in custody and a confession, there’s no rush on it, they aren’t in a hurry for forensics like they would be if they were out looking for the killer and needed leads. They’ll want to talk to you all again, and you’ll have to sign statements. They’re getting a warrant for Alice’s apartment, they’ll probably search it sometime today.”

“I slept there last night,” Shane said.

“You leave anything there you don’t want them to find?”

“I smoked a couple joints, but I flushed the butts this morning and washed out the ashtray.”

“Does Alice have a stash?”

“Probably. Will that matter?”

“I doubt it.”

“What are they looking for?”

“Anything having to do with Jenny. E-mails, anything else on her laptop. Anything that looks like a motive for murder.”

“What about … you know. Personal stuff.”

Tasha had once been Alice’s lover. She knew about Alice’s toys and where she kept them. She knew all the stuff in Alice’s medicine closet and in her bedside table. “Shane,” she said, ‘it’s West Hollywood. The police have searched apartments here before, and believe me, they’ve found stuff, far, far, far worse and more tantalizing than anything in Alice’s apartment. They’ll know what’s private and has nothing to do with Jenny, and what isn’t. They aren’t going to take her strap-on, nipple clamps and other toys and bring them to the arraignment.”

“They’d need a U-Haul,” Bette said, and for the first time all morning there was a little bit of laughter.

“Next item,” Tasha said. “Jenny’s mother and stepfather have been notified. Marybeth took care of the notification herself, personally, late yesterday. It’s way too soon to know anything else, of course. If everything goes normally, Jenny’s body will probably be released in about a week, after the coroner’s division says it’s okay. So we don’t know anything at all about funeral arrangements.”

“I feel like we should do something,” Helena said, “but I’m not sure what. Send flowers to her mother? Get in contact somehow? Call her and give her our condolences? Anybody got any ideas?”

Shane stirred. She knew this question touched on her territory. She and Max were the only two who had met Jenny’s family. Well, plus Carmen when Carmen and Shane had escorted jenny to the mental hospital back in Skokie.

“I’m pretty sure her parents don’t want to hear from me,” Max said.

“Why not?” Tina asked.

Max grinned. “One time they caught me and Jenny in bed. We had just finished … you know. We were half-dressed. They threw us both out of the house. That’s when we packed up and came out to Los Angeles.”

“It took a while,” Shane said, “but Jenny and her mom eventually started talking to each other again. Jenny would call on birthdays and holidays and stuff. They started sending each other birthday and Christmas presents again. She talked on the phone with her mom once in a while. Not a lot, and not too long, only a few minutes. She told her about the major events in her life, like when she sold the book and movie stuff, and when she bought the Beemer. But it was also like this family chore, something she felt she had to do more than wanted to do. She never talked to her stepfather at all. Sometimes when she’d hang up she’d say, ‘Well, that’s off my to-do list for this month.’ Like that.”

“We need to send flowers,” Tina said decisively. “Her daughter was murdered. We were her friends. We have to acknowledge it.”

Bette nodded.

“What do we say?” Helena asked. “Do we mention it was Alice who is under arrest? We’re sorry one of our best friends murdered your daughter?”

“Helena!” Kit said, frowning.

“See, that’s my point,” Helena said. “What the hell do we say? And how do we say it politely and respectfully?”

“Anybody know what Jenny’s mother knows about us?” Helena asked.

“You mean, does she know we’re a coven of dykes who have seduced her daughter into the perverted lifestyle of the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name? That Jenny’s had hot monkey sex with Max, Carmen, Shane and Niki, not to mention some others further afield? And then there’s, you know, the sex tape.”

“Can’t forget the sex tape,” Kit murmured. “Lordy, lordy.”

“Let’s be serious,” Tina said. “If she’s read her own daughter’s book and if she knows her daughter wrote and partially directed the movie version called _Lez Girls_ , then, yeah, I suspect her mom is clued in, even with some denial on top.”

“So what do we say?” Helena asked.

Shane stirred, which surprised everyone. “We tell the truth,” she said. “We are – we were – her friends, we loved her, we’ll miss her, we’re deeply sorry for her loss.”

They all thought about how much of it was true, since two nights ago they all hated Jenny for all the crap she’d given all of them. Would they really miss her? Well … yes.

“Close enough, works for me,” Kit said.

“Me, too,” Max said.

“What do we say about Alice, if anything?” Helena asked.

“Nothing. Jenny’s mom can talk to Marybeth Duffy anytime she wants, if she wants details,” Bette said.

Tina tapped her fingers on the table. “Look, I’ve got to put this out there. We have to talk about it. Do we really think Alice did it?”

“Fuck, no,” Shane said instantly.

“No,” Bette said.

“Me, either,” Kit said.

“I don’t see it, either, no,” Helena said.

“No muthafuckin’ way,” Tasha said.

“Max?” Tina asked.

“Alice? No way.”

“Then it’s unanimous,” Tina said. “If not Alice, who?”

“Look, I’m not doing this,” Kit said, standing up. “Far as I’m concerned, none of us did it, including Alice. I got work to do. Tina and Bette are moving to New York in a few days, I’m sure they’ve got a lot to do. It might be good therapy for the rest of us to help them pack up and whatever else they need. Me, I’m gonna need some quality time for my sweet Angelica before she moves away out of her auntie’s clutches. Hearing no nay votes, I hereby declare this meeting adjourned.”

“Wait, there is one last thing,” Tasha said.

“What’s that, soul sista?” Kit asked.

“Somebody’s got to tell Carmen.”

Nobody looked at Shane. “I’ll do it,” Tina said.

“You know how to get in touch with her?” Tasha asked.

“Of course. We talk or e-mail all the time. Sometimes she calls or Skypes just to talk to Angelica. Right now she’s halfway home from a senior citizens cruise to Hawaii. I can make an emergency telephone call to the ship.”

Shane was amazed Tina knew all this, but said nothing. One thing was certain, though: Carmen was going to be devastated by the news, and very, very upset by Alice’s arrest. And she’d never believe the confession, any more than anyone else did.


	21. Pulling the Trigger

Carmen picked up Shane on Monday morning at Alice’s old apartment on North Harper Avenue, and when they arrived at the conference room, coffees from _The Planet_ in hand, they were surprised to see Marybeth Duffy sitting next to Lauren. They both had their laptops open.

“Good morning, park your butts in your chairs, let’s get going,” Marybeth said.

“Copy that. Roger, dodger. Ten-four,” Carmen said. “Happy Monday morning to you, too.”

“Hey, guys,” Lauren said.

“Hey,” Shane said back. “Hey, Lieutenant.”

“You heard me tell Jack I was going to supervise this case personally,” Marybeth said, “and that’s what I’m doing. But there’s something else. You guys have exceeded my expectations and turned up half a dozen viable suspects, not to mention an extra murder, so I’m officially kicking this thing up to formal, official status. Lauren knows what this means, which is she’ll need to start filing more official paperwork and reports. And normally a murder investigation requires detectives to work in pairs, so there’s always some backup. I’m not going to assign Lauren a partner, though, partly because she has you two tagging along with her, and partly because I’m assigning myself as her partner if and when she runs into anything requiring a second badge and gun on scene. If we were back in the 1880s, I’d just deputize you two guys and toss you some badges, but today I’d get my ass fired for even thinking about deputizing two rank amateurs.”

“Badges? We don’t need no steenkin’ badges,” Carmen said.

Marybeth looked at Lauren.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Lauren said. “You walked into that one all by yourself. The minute you said the word ‘badge,’ I knew it was coming. Carmen’s a world-class movie trivia expert.”

“I’m your huckleberry,” Carmen said.

Marybeth closed her eyes for a moment, composing herself. She decided to move on. “Even though we’re going official, we’re still going to keep it quiet, and we’re not telling the DA’s office yet, so don’t you guys say anything to anybody, including Alice. I know that may be hard for you, if and when you talk to her. I understand she knows you’re working on it with Lauren, and that’s fine. Just don’t get her hopes up, because I don’t want her running around Humboldt telling everybody she’s going to get sprung any day now. You may disagree, but my opinion is Alice doesn’t have need-to-know what we’re doing. We’ll get her out if and when we get her out, and nothing anybody says to her will speed it up. So I’d appreciate it if you kept her out of our loop. Lauren and I have talked about it, and we know we’ll have to re-interview her, maybe even more than once. So that’s yet another reason I don’t want you guys telling Alice anything she doesn’t already know. I don’t care about personal stuff, but I don’t want a single word said about anything relating to the case or suspects unless Lauren is there and she’s the one asking the questions. You both on board with that?”

Shane and Carmen looked at each other and back at Marybeth. “Yes, we’re on board,” Carmen said. “We get what you’re saying. I’m okay with it.”

“Me, too,” Shane said.

“Good. Next up, Lauren’s been updating the old timeline, as you know. So here’s new, fresh copies. Lauren has boldfaced some of the key events and spaced them out so they stand out.” She passed them each a sheaf of papers stapled together. “There’s a lot of stuff in it for us to chew on. I’m going to insist it stay inside this building. If you’re with Lauren, she’ll have a copy, and if need be, you can work off that. I just don’t want one of you guys found carrying an official LASD homicide case document.”

Shane and Carmen nodded. “Yes, sure,” Carmen said. She began to read the updated timeline.

_Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau_

_Homicide Case 51039 Schecter, Jennifer Diane_

_Date/Time of Homicide: 03/08/09 Approx 2100 hours to 2115 hours_

_Investigators: Det. Sgt. M. Duffy, Det/2 S. Holden, Homicide Bureau_

_Location: 254 14th Street, West Hollywood CA and adjacent house at 256 14th Street,_

_where vic resided_

_TIMELINE_

_Timeline modified by Det/2 Lauren Hancock, LASD Badge #1471_

_5/14/07 Jenny gets offer to turn book into film_

_5/23/07 Jenny signs contract, receives $100,000 for film rights to_ Lez Girls

 _6/06/07 Tina and Jenny (via Shaolin Studios) hire Kate Arden to direct_ Lez Girls, _Jenny to write screenplay_

_7/23/07 Kate fires Jenny from writing screenplay, assigns Stacey Merkin to write_

_1/05/08 Jenny returns from Mexico vacation with financier William Halsey_

_1/08 to 03/08 Jenny fights with Tina, studio, gets Halsey to finance_ Lez Girls _; Kate Arden, Stacey Merkin fired_

 _4/14/08 Jenny signs contract for $20k/month to direct_ Lez Girls _, will be paid $200k to write/finish screenplay; pre-production meetings begin that week_

_7/10/08 Studio (Aaron, Tina, Halsey) accepts screenplay, greenlights production, Jenny bank account receives $200k wire transfer payment for screenplay_

_8/02/08 Adele becomes Jenny’s assistant_

_8/02/08 Casting for_ Lez Girls _begins_

 _8/05/08 Natalie Portman says no to_ Lez Girls

_8/06/08 Big fight w/Aaron, Tina over casting Niki Stevens_

_8/09/08_ SheBar _party – Niki talks to Jenny_

_8/11/08 [Monday] First table read-through, full principal cast_

_89/13/08 [Afternoon] Shane and MyLoverCindi [MLC] affair_

_8/13/08 2000+ Party at Jenny/Shane’s for cast plus Friends group; Denbo makes scene, war with_ Planet _begins_

 _8/14/08 [Late morning] Shane goes to_ SheBar _to apologize, Denbo wants_ SheBar _to replace_ Planet _as location for $50k/day; Shane says no_

 _8/18/08 [Monday] Principal photography on_ Lez Girls _begins_

 _8/23/08 [Saturday night]_ SheBar _Turkish Oil Wrestling Night; Denbo, MLC arrested, $10k fine_

**_8/??/08 [End of summer] The Creep shows up at unoccupied house behind Jenny/Shane’s house [256 15th Street, West Hollywood], intermittent appearances thereafter_ **

_9/13-14/08 Subaru Pink Ride bike marathon, **Jenny/Niki make sex tape**_

_9/17-14/08 Denbo, Cindi Tucker (MLC) buy 51% of_ Planet _from Ivan_

_9/18/08 [Day] Kit buys gun_

_9/??/08 Kit goes to_ SheBar _with gun; nothing happens_

 _?/??/08 MLC sells her share of_ Planet _to Helena;_ SheBar _crisis over_

**_10/06/08 [Monday] Jenny, Niki make bank withdrawals of $9,950 each_ **

_10/29/08 circa late morning Adele coup against Jenny on film set_

**_11/06/08 [Thursday] Jenny, Niki make bank withdrawals of $9,950 each_ **

**_12/08/08 [Monday] Jenny, Niki make bank withdrawals of $9,950 each [Saturday 6th bank closed]_ **

**_1/06/09 [Tuesday] Jenny, Niki make bank withdrawals of $9,950 each_ **

_1/13/09 Jenny bank account receives $500k check for movie treatment [alleged to be Alice’s]_

_1/18/09 [Afternoon] Molly returns Shane’s jacket to Jenny, assume placed in attic_

_1/24/09 [Day] Adele signs three-picture deal for $1.5 mil_

_1/24/09 [evening, night]_ Lez Girls _wrap party, Jenny discovers Shane/Niki sex. Shane evicted._

_1/25-26/09 [Sunday night/Monday morning] -- Jenny has all-night sex w/ Niki, rejects her in the morning_

_1/26/09 Deluxe Motion Picture Labs ready to ship negatives, Mid-afternoon fax sent saying messenger will pick up negatives_

_1/26/09 2000-2100 Eastside Messengers picks up negative canisters, delivers to Wilson/Cramer Productions attn. Jenny Schechter_

**_1/26/09 after 2100 or unknown time later -- Someone (Niki?) picks up negative canisters (effective date/time of theft)_ **

**_1/27/09 to approx. 2/04/09?? Niki puts canisters in Jenny/Shane’s attic (assume earlier date)_ **

**_2/06/09 [Friday] Jenny, Niki make bank withdrawals of $9,950 each_ **

_2/08/09 [Morning] Max walks out after LaMaze class_

_2/22/09 [Night] Bette art gallery opening; Jenny sees Bette & Kelly in believed (untrue) kitchen sex _

_2/15/09 Alice discovers/claims Jenny stole manuscript/treatment_

_2/15/09 [Evening] Tina/Bette have dinner, Tina accuses William/Aaron of stealing negatives_

_2/22/09 1800 Baby shower; Jenny tells Dylan about Niki plot, angering Helena_

_3/1/09 Jenny threatens to tell Tina about Bette/Kelly_

**_3/06/09 [Friday] xxxx No bank withdrawals made (no blackmail payments delivered?)_ **

_3/08/09 1700 Shane talks to Molly about letter/jacket_

_3/08/09 1830 Shane discovers jacket, negatives_

_3/08/09 1830-1900 Times wits/suspects arrived at party_

_3/08/09 1910 Shane notifies Tina, Tina sees negatives in attic_

_3/08/09 ???? Last time Jenny seen alive by ??_

**_3/08/09 approx 2100 to 2115 Jenny murdered x drowning_ **

_3/08/09 2127 Switchboard 911 call from Tina reporting drowning_

_3/08/09 2134 Squad car C-7 Cpl. R Richards, Off. T. Hoskins arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2142 Cpl. Richards reports possible homicide_

_3/08/09 2143 Dispatcher call-out to Sgt. M. Duffy, Det/2 S. Holden, Coroner, Forensic Teams_

_3/08/09 2146-8 Squad cars A-6, A-19, K-8 arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2150 Coroner Unit 3 arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2152 CSI forensics team arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2201 Duffy/Holden arrive 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2203 Duffy/Holden briefed, view scene_

_3/08/09 2204 Duffy meets w/ 7 wits + infant_

_3/08/09 2207 Off. Tasha Williams, off duty, acquaintance/Alice ex-lover, arrives 256 14th Street_

_3/08/09 2214 Niki Stevens, acquaintance/ex-lover, discovered in bushes by Off. Hoskins_

_3/08/09 2308 7 wits (+ infant) + Niki asked to go to LASD West Hollywood Station for_

_further questioning_

_3/08/09 2331 8 wits arrive LASD WHS for further questioning_

_3/09/09 0017 First interrogation Alice by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0119 First interrogation Bette by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0131 Adjacent residence at 254 14th Street prelim search_

_3/09/09 0148 Coroner removes Jenny, taken to morgue_

_3/09/09 0231 First interrogation Tina by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0359 First interrogation Shane by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0510 First interrogation Helena by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0620 CSI/Forensics departs, scene taped off & restricted_

_3/09/09 0718 First interrogation Kit by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0822 First interrogation Max by Duffy/Holden_

_3/09/09 0926 First interrogation Niki by Duffy/Holden_

_3/10/09 0940 Telephone call from Alice to Duffy requesting another interview_

**_3/10/09 1117 Second interrogation Alice by Duffy/Holden, Mirandized, confesses to murder of Jenny_ **

_3/10/09 1344 Pieszecki permitted to call atty. Joyce Wischnia for legal referral_

_3/10/09 1344 Duffy calls ADA G. Berger, gives update_

_3/10/09 1350 Duffy calls Tasha Williams for interview_

_3/10/09 1524 Alice taken to holding cell_

_3/11/09 1006 Alice’s atty. Malcolm Drinkwater arrives, confers with client_

_3/12/09 0930 Interview with Tasha by Duffy/Holden_

_3/16/09 0756 Preliminary forensic report picked up by Duffy_

_3/16/09 0818 Duffy/Holden arrive at coroner for Jenny autopsy_

_3/18/09 1123 Jenny autopsy results delivered; body release by coroner, to be shipped to mother in Illinois_

_4/01/09 Alice preliminary hearing, pleads guilty_

_4/05/09 Alice bail hearing, no bail requested, no bail set_

_4/27/09 Grand jury indictment (pro forma)_

_5/02/09 Max gives birth to male child_

_5/??/09 Adoption of Max’s child_

_5/13/09 Alice trial expedited by guilty plea, pled down to second degree manslaughter_

_5/26/09 Alice sentencing hearing, 7-10 years_

_5/27/09 Alice arrives Humboldt Farm_

_6/??/09 Max has top surgery_

_8/21/09 Max employed by Fast Fix Golden State Computers, Bakersfield (personnel records)_

_9/13/09 Max’s baby dies of SIDS in foster home [Did Max know?]_

_3/11/10 1732 Max departs work (timecard)_

**_3/12/10 0330 approx. Max killed by hit-and-run_ ** _(autopsy determination)_

**_3/12/10 0740 CHP dispatch receives phone call reporting body by road_ **

**_3/12/10 0806 CHP Patrol Car 19, Cpl. Baker reports body (Max), requests Kern County full roll-out_ **

_3/12/10 0849 CSI, coroner teams arrive_

_3/12/10 0917 Tentative identification of Max_

_3/12/10 1006 Call-out to Kern County Homicide_

_3/12/10 1117 Dets. Collins, Baxter arrive on scene_

_3/13/10 1119 BOLO on Max’s Subaru (never found)_

_3/13/10 1435 Telephone conversation w/ Tom Mater_

_3/13/10 1100 Interview w/ Tom Mater at Kern County homicide bureau office_

_3/17/10 Kern County autopsy of Max_

_3/24/10 Kern County officially files Sweeney hit-and-run case homicide, not accidental_

_4/01/10 Max autopsy official, final results of lab tests delivered to Kern County/Det. Collins (on leave)_

_401/10 Max’s body released by coroner, referred to county for cremation_

The conference room was quiet while they read. “Wow,” Carmen muttered about three-quarters of the way through. “Good work, Lauren.”

Thanks,” Lauren said. “I got help from you guys, of course, but Tina e-mailed me a lot of dates and times from her appointments calendar back then. So she had a lot of input. And obviously some of the information about Max came from Detective Collin’s folder he gave me.”

When they finished reading Marybeth handed Shane and Carmen copies of another document. “I had Lauren put this together,” Marybeth said. It read:

_Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau_

_Homicide Case 51039 Schecter, Jennifer Diane_

_Date/Time of Homicide: 03/08/09 Approx 2100 hours to 2115 hours_

_Investigators: Det. Sgt. M. Duffy, Det/2 S. Holden, Homicide Bureau_

_Location: 254 14th Street, West Hollywood CA and adjacent house at 256 14th Street,_

_where vic resided_

_List of Suspects as of This Date_

_By Det/2 Lauren Hancock, LASD Badge #1471_

_Theoretical Suspects in Schecter Homicide:_

_Max Sweeney_

_Tina Kinnard_

_Bette Porter_

_Kit Porter_

_Shane McCutcheon_

_Helena Peabody_

_Alice Pieszecki_

_Niki Stevens_

_Unsub #1, aka The Creep_

_Unsub #2, The Blackmailer (if any)_

_Adele Channing (Is she the Blackmailer/Unsub #2?)_

_Aaron/William/Studio_

_Dawn Denbo_

_Probable/Actionable Suspects in Schecter Homicide:_

_Max Sweeney_

_Niki Stevens_

_Unsub #1, aka The Creep_

_Unsub #2, The Blackmailer (if any)_

_Adele Channing_

_Aaron/William/Studio_

_Theoretical Suspects in Max Sweeney’s Homicide:_

_Unsub #3 (Unsub#1, The Creep? Unsub #2 The Blackmailer? All one and the same?)_

_Adele Channing_

_Tom Mater_

_Adoptive Family of Max’s Baby_

_Possible Suspects in Max’s Homicide:_

_Unsub #1, aka The Creep_

_Unsub #2, The Blackmailer (if any)_

_Unsub #3 (if Bakersfield is unconnected to Schecter)_

_Adele Channing (if she’s the Blackmailer)_

_What if:_

  * _Max saw Jenny’s murder (or figured out who the killer was)?_
    1. _Suppose it was Unsub#1/Creep_
    2. _Suppose it was Adele_
    3. _Suppose it was Niki_
  * _What if Niki Stevens saw Jenny’s murder (or figured out who the killer was)?_
    1. _Suppose it was Unsub#1/Creep_
    2. _Suppose it was Adele_
    3. _Suppose it was Max_
  * _What if Unsub #1/Creep saw Jenny’s murder?_
    1. _Suppose it was Max_
    2. _Suppose it was Adele_
    3. _Suppose it was Niki_



_Common Factors/Similarities in Both Homicides:_

  * _Presence of Unsub_
  * _Knew same general circle of people_
  * _Both possibly/superficially interpreted as “accidents,” possibly by intention_



_Differing Factors/Dissimilarities in Both Homicides:_

  * _Jenny’s homicide possibly spontaneous/unpremeditated; Max’s homicide clearly premeditated_
  * _Jenny surrounded by possible suspects w/motive; Max isolated, no one around him_
  * _Jenny wealthy, Max poor/struggling financially_



_Traditional Question: Who Benefits From the Homicide:_

_Of Jenny: Jenny’s mother (inheritance); Anyone seeking revenge/payback; Anyone wanting_

_to keep her quiet about something_

_Of Max: Possible killer of Jenny (get rid of witness); Tom Mater (revenge); Adoptive Family (revenge)_

_Other Questions:_

  * _Was there really blackmail going on? Over what? Sex Tape, or Stolen Negatives? Other?_
  * _Is there connection between the two homicides?_
  * _If Max killed Jenny, is Max’s homicide due to his killing Jenny (Paybacks)?_



“I’ve got a question,” Carmen said.

“Yes, Grasshopper?” Marybeth said.

Carmen didn’t like “Grasshopper,” but it was important to her not to show it, especially to Marybeth. “Suppose Alice had been arrested but pleaded not guilty. Wouldn’t her defense attorney have turned up some of this stuff?”

“Excellent question,” Marybeth said. “With all these alternate suspects and theories, Alice’s case would have been blown out of court because of the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ requirement. But here’s the thing: I hope to god that if Alice hadn’t confessed and shut down my investigation, she would have never been charged at all, and that Sean and I would have started turning up all this stuff. No offense, but the minute you guys went to work suspects started jumping out of the woodwork at you. So in a way, your defense attorney ‘reasonable doubt’ situation would never have arisen in the first place. Because, god forbid, if we hadn’t started turning up all this stuff, I’d have to turn in my badge and go home and swallow my gun.”

“Uh, yes, okay,” Carmen said. “I see that.”

“Here’s something you may not have seen,” Marybeth said. “If Alice hadn’t fucked up my investigation, we’d have been all over all this other evidence. You agree?”

Carmen and Shane nodded.

“If we’d have been tracking all this stuff down, talking to everybody, sweating the more obvious alternate suspects like Adele and Niki, maybe even working on the Unsub creep behind your house, you know what? Maybe we’d have prevented Max’s murder.”

“What are you saying?” Carmen asked, although she thought she knew.

“I’m saying that Alice may have blood on her hands, after all. Her false confession that stopped the investigation may have allowed Max’s murder to occur.”

“Oh, my god,” Carmen murmured.

“Fuck,” Shane said.

“Shane,” Carmen said quietly.

“Yes?”

“Even when all this is over and Alice is out of prison, we can never say this part to her. We can never say anything that suggests she’s responsible for Max getting killed because she fucked up.”

“Yes, I know. I mean, yes, I agree.”

“Maybe she’ll figure it out for herself someday, I don’t know. But I’m not going to be the one to help her figure it out.”

“I understand. Me, neither.”

Carmen turned to Marybeth and Lauren. “Since we don’t get no steenkin’ badges, what’s our next step?”

Lauren looked at Marybeth, who said, “I think it’s time we pulled the trigger. We’ve deliberately avoided talking to Niki Stevens while we gathered other information and interviews. Lauren, if you agree, it’s time we got her ass in here and sweated her until she’s the proverbial 98-pound weakling. You know how to contact her?”

“Not exactly. But I found out who her lawyers are. All we need to do is call them and tell them to produce their client. They’ll come, too, but even if we contacted Niki directly I don’t see any way she consents to be interviewed without lawyering up the wazoo.”

“No. So give them a call and get her in here. If they balk and say they prefer to do it in their office, tell them no. Tell them we’re in the middle of an official murder investigation, and she’s both a material witness as well as a suspect, and that we’re going to record and film the entire interview. Tell them we'll get a warrant for her arrest if they don’t agree to produce her in 24 hours.”

“You think they’ll buy that bluff?”

“Bluff? What bluff? I want you in front of a judge in an hour with a warrant request in your hand. If probable cause comes up, tell the judge we have bank statements indicating Stevens was a blackmail victim, and we want to know if she murdered her blackmailer.”


	22. Interrogation

Niki Stevens brought three of them. At first Lauren thought of them as Suit No. 1, Suit No. 2, and Suit No. 3, but changed her mind. They were Granddad, The Bitch, and The Briefcase Carrier. Between them they wore $10,000 worth of clothes. Between them, Shane, Carmen, Lauren and Marybeth wore less than $900 worth of clothes.

Suit No. 1, Granddad, was a named partner of his firm, Grant, Calloway, Meadows and Greenberg. There was no doubt in Lauren’s mind that as lawyers go he was a great white shark, but his role was to be friendly, jolly, affable, familiar, reasonable, cooperative, open, forthcoming. Highly dangerous, in other words. He had white, grandfatherly hair, a tanned face and monogrammed cufflinks in the French cuffs of his shirt. “Call me Cal,” he said. Not in a million years, Lauren thought. You’re going to remain Mr. Calloway.

Suit No. 2 was, of course, a woman, and she was The Bitch. The Cold-Eyed Killer. Steely Fran. Do _not_ fuck with me. A legal gunslinger. Carmen immediately recognized her as a cross between Jack Palance in _Shane_ , the Alien who slobbered on Sigourney Weaver, and Grendel’s mother, wearing Dolce & Gabbana. In court in front of a jury she’d dress down, but today she was dressed to make every other woman in the room feel bad. She was Lauren’s age, trim, good-looking, dark blond, asexual. Shane’s gaydar chirped once, crashed, showed the Blue Screen of Death, rebooted. “Bobbi Beckwith,” she said, introducing herself. She and Calloway would try to turn the tables and play Good Cop, Bad Cop with Lauren and Marybeth. Good luck with that.

Suit No. 3 was a younger man about 30 years old. Recent Stanford grad, although maybe Yale or Chicago if he was a West Coast diversity hire, trim, handsome, well-dressed, somebody’s well-educated, slick preppy offspring who would one day have his name on the door. Right now, though, his job was to bill 80 hours a week and carry Calloway’s briefcase. “Hi, Elliott Haynesworth Cartwright, Junior,” he said, smiling. Of course you are, Lauren thought.

Niki Stevens had spent nearly an hour in her clothes closet with her besties, trying to determine the optimal outfit to suit the role of ex-rehab murder suspect. Gamin? Shabby chic? Ingénue? Dyke, boi or lipstick? Power actress? Girl next door? Waif? Corporate exec? Gal pal? Malibu Barbie? Either of the Hepburns, and if so, which one? On a movie set, her clothes were determined by the costume designer, and except for the brief period of time she was fucking the director of _Lez Girls_ , costume designers neither wanted nor heeded her input. One of the besties suggested calling some movie costume people for advice, which Niki thought was a great idea. She called three; two of them hung up on her because they could, and the third suggested Dorothy Wizard of Oz Innocent. Niki couldn’t tell if the advice was serious or not. In the end, Niki chose jeans and a man’s white oxford dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and Velcro-closing running shoes in case they wanted to take her shoelaces away. Minimal make-up, just a little foundation, no jewelry.

“Hey, Shane,” she said softly, crossing the conference room to give a startled Shane cheek-to-cheek air hugs. It was the start of a Charm Offensive. “You must be Carmen,” she said, shaking hands. “I feel like I know you, I’ve heard so much about you. It’s so nice to finally meet you after all these years.” (Translation: Feel free to do me any time. Here, now, later on, in Malibu, in Maui, in the vestibule of Wal-Mart, on this table, any time, place and way you want.) Niki was trying her best to be friends with the only other woman who had fucked both Jenny and Shane, and who she’d been told was three times better at it than she or they would ever be. The truth was she’d heard nothing whatsoever about Carmen from Shane, who was always discreet. It was Jenny who had told her about Carmen, saying she was better at carpet-munching than even the spooky, icy Marina whom Niki only knew from the actress playing her in the movie. Carmen was the all-time best fuck Jenny had ever had. While Carmen would never become the widely known Urban Legend Lesbian that Shane or the equally infamous Papi Torres had become, her skills were known to a select few, and now unfortunately Niki was in on the secret. Jenny had told Niki how supernaturally talented a lez Carmen was not because it was true – which it was – but only to make Niki feel like shit.

“Lieutenant Duffy, congratulations on your promotion,” Niki said, offering her hand to Marybeth.

“Thank you,” Marybeth said, using as neutral a tone as she could muster. “Everyone, please be seated.” She had picked Lauren’s conference room because it would hold all eight of them. Marybeth’s own office was too small, and she and Lauren would have preferred to sweat Niki in a standard interrogation room, which was pre-rigged with all the recording equipment and one-way mirrors anyone could desire. Marybeth and Lauren had discussed whether to erase all their data and timelines on the whiteboards and remove all the photos and other things they’d pinned to bulletin boards around the room. They decided to leave everything up, and in fact went out of their way to pin up crime scene photos of Jenny and Max’s corpses. They had left the evidence boxes out on the table, with various working documents here and there. The messages were clear: This is a full-scale murder investigation. We’re not fucking around like last time, so don’t mess with us. Look at the photos: Those are dead people. We’re pissed, so sit down and shut up.

Marybeth sat at the head of the table, so Granddad sat opposite her at the far end. Lauren flanked Marybeth, and The Bitch flanked Granddad, with Niki next to her. Carmen sat next to Niki, so that left Lauren, Shane and The Briefcase Carrier facing them.

“Before we begin, Lieutenant, I’d like to know if you consider my client a suspect,” Calloway said.

“I understand,” Marybeth said, “but first things first. I want everything videotaped and on the record, so I’m going to start that right now.” She had a tape recorder on the table and punched its start button. The red light on a video recorder set up in a corner of the room also came on.

“My name is Lt. Marybeth Duffy of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and this conversation is being recorded and videotaped.” She gave the date, location and the names of everyone in the room, and the case number of Jenny’s murder. “Now Mr. Calloway, I believe you had a preliminary question?”

“Yes, thank you, Lieutenant Duffy. I wanted to begin by asking whether you consider my client to be an active suspect in this new investigation. I would also like it noted for the record that we are hereby formally requesting copies of this tape recording and videotaping in as timely a manner as possible.”

“Yes, you’ll get copies of all recordings and tapings as soon as we can, probably the end of the day. I’ll have them dropped off at your office by this evening. Now, to your other question. At this time we consider Ms. Stevens to be a material witness to our homicide investigation but she is not a suspect. Therefore we have not advised of her of her Miranda rights, which in any case I’m sure you’ve taken care of. I’m certain that with three skilled and capable attorneys in the room she is more than fully advised and protected. I would add that while she is not under oath, we do expect her to be truthful in all her answers, and while she is not subject to charges of perjury in the event she might tell a lie, we would very strongly consider any lies or evasions or deliberate mis-truths to constitute obstruction of justice and interference with a police investigation, and would consider pressing charges on that basis. And of course she always has the option of declining to answer or invoking her Fifth Amendment rights and other protections she has. That said, if she admits or we subsequently discover that she did in fact murder Jennifer Schecter, we will in fact so charge her. Basically, if she didn’t kill Jenny or have anything to do with it, she’s fine. If she did, she’s toast. I will add one other thing. In her previous interrogation we conducted right after Jenny Schecter’s murder, Ms. Stevens made some statements that may be characterized and construed as inaccurate, misleading or worse. We want to fully state here and now that nothing Ms. Stevens said in that previous interrogation will be used against her. We’re going to forget that interview ever happened, and she now has the opportunity to start over with a nice, brand new, shiny clean slate. Having said all that legal boilerplate, we do wish to have Ms. Stevens’ full and frank and willing cooperation in the investigation of these two homicides.”

“Two homicides?” Calloway asked, clearly surprised. He and The Bitch looked at each other. From the look on her face, Niki didn’t seem to know what Marybeth was talking about, either.

Go, Marybeth! Lauren thought to herself. That’s a gotcha. First blood to our team.

Ohhhhhh, nice move! Carmen thought.

“Yes, that’s the next thing I have to inform you about. Jenny wasn’t the only one murdered who was there that night. There’s been a second homicide that we only recently became aware of. I’ll be happy to fill you in.”

“Please do,” Calloway said.

For twenty minutes Marybeth told them about the hit-and-run murder of Max Sweeney outside of Bakersfield. She also told them about Max’s baby and its adoption and death from SIDS. She was crisp and to-the-point, dispassionate. She occasionally stood up to point out something on the photo board or the timeline on the white boards as The Bitch and The Briefcase Carrier jotted notes on legal pads. She did it all from memory, and Shane and Carmen were impressed.

“At this time,” Marybeth concluded, “we have no reason to believe Ms. Stevens has any connection with that homicide in Bakersfield, and from her appearance and aspect she clearly appears not to have known about it. That said, the possibility exists that with hindsight she may or may not have information that might help with the Sweeney hit-and-run case, and we’d like to explore that in due course. Before we get to that, there are at least three other areas we want to explore.”

“Okay,” Calloway said. “And they are?”

“First, we need to go into great detail about Niki’s theft of the _Lez Girls_ negatives and how they were planted in Jenny’s attic. I notice you don’t like the word ‘theft’ that I used, and you probably won’t like ‘steal’ and ‘stole’ either, but that’s what she did. We are aware the studio has declined to press charges, and we reluctantly have decided to go along with that, although it’s not legally required that we do. We can press charges with or without the studio, as I’m sure you’re aware. So to put your mind at rest, we are not going to pursue any criminal charges. You can call it by some euphemism such as ‘took’ or ‘misappropriated’ or ‘repurposed’ or ‘diverted,’ but to keep things in focus I’m just going to call it theft and stealing. But she stole those negatives and planted them in Jenny’s attic. We need to know every single detail about what she did, because one possibility is it may play a very strong role in the homicide. I’m not going to waste time and effort prosecuting the theft of negatives when the studio won’t even press charges. We’re investigating two murders, and we’ll be happy to give you whatever waivers and grant of immunity regarding the stolen negatives you may need.”

“I’ll get that started right away,” The Bitch said.

“Well, now, Bobbi,” Calloway said calmly, putting his hand on her arm, “I don’t think that’s necessary at this time. Let’s wait and see. I take Lt. Duffy’s offer on good faith, and after all, we’re here to cooperate any way we can. Besides, we have the offer on tape and video, and I think that will be sufficient if anything pops up down the road.”

Bad cop, good cop.

Calloway continued. “Lieutenant, you said there were two other areas you wanted to talk about.”

“Yes. Item number two is the blackmail.”

Calloway smiled. “We know about the blackmail, and we’re prepared to discuss it. What else?”

Niki had not looked up from her hands since Marybeth had finished describing Max’s murder, and she didn’t make eye contact now. She just sighed and braced herself. Calloway and The Bitch had drummed into her to keep her mouth shut unless told to talk, and by God she was following orders.

“The third thing is somebody we call The Creep. It’s a man who appears to be some kind of stalker. We think he may have even been in the area on the night of Jenny’s murder. We need to know if Niki knows anything about him or is even aware of him.”

That finally got Niki’s attention. She looked up, glanced at Shane and Carmen, then at Calloway. She opened her mouth, then quickly closed it. Everyone in the room knew Marybeth had touched a nerve.

“I think we need to speak privately with our client,” The Bitch said.

“Niki,” Calloway asked quietly, “are we okay? Anything we need to discuss before we go further?”

Bad cop, good cop.

“No, it’s all right,” Niki said. She turned to Marybeth. “You said you think somebody was watching us?”

“We think so, yes. What do you think?”

Niki nodded. “It’s … I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know anything. Nothing specific. But … .”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes I had this weird feeling. What did you call him? The Creep? The minute you said it … .” She let it die off.

“Are you talking about the night of the murder?” Marybeth asked.

“No. The other times,” Niki said.

“What other times?” Marybeth asked quietly. Carmen thought she’d never been in a room so silent. The old cliché, you could hear a pin drop.

“The night I put the negatives in the attic. And … other times.”

“What other times,” Marybeth repeated, again quietly.

“At Jenny’s house. One time at my house. One time, well, we went out to Santa Barbara. You know, romantic get-away dinner, walk on the beach, fuck in the surf. We kind of thought … somebody was watching. Following us.” She looked at Marybeth. “We were right, weren’t we?”

“By ‘we’ you mean you and Jenny?”

“Yes. At first she made fun of me, she said I was imagining things, because I was a movie star and all. You know, vain. Everybody's looking at me. And then for a while we thought it was Adele. I mean, Adele, that woman is bat-shit crazy, and she’d do it, follow us around and videotape us. She stole the tape Jenny made of us at the Subaru weekend. And then the blackmail thing started. And then one night we saw him, and then we knew it wasn’t Adele.”

“You saw him?” Marybeth asked.

“Yes. I mean, not so we could tell who he was. But one time we were in La Jolla, on the beach in the cove where the sea lions are? We weren’t really doing anything, you know, just fooling around. Maybe a little kissing, that’s all. Nothing serious. But I looked up, and on top of the cliff there was this man staring down at us. I think he had a videotape camera in his hand. Jenny said I was imagining it. Maybe I was, I’m still not sure.”

“Niki, you never mentioned this to us,” Granddad Calloway said.

Niki shrugged. “Tell you what? That I had creepy feelings somebody was stalking me? I’m an actress. Of course people are stalking me. Paparazzi stalk me everywhere I go. Some guy on a cliff? That’s nothing. I’ve had people follow me into the ladies room when I want to take a piss. I climb out of a limo at a nightclub, somebody's trying to get a shot up my dress. I get creepy feelings I’m being watched five times a day.”

“Okay,” Calloway said. “Go on.”

“Anyway, this guy on the cliff, he could have been filming the sea lions for all I know.”

“You said it was night,” Marybeth said.

“Oh. Yeah. Yes, that’s true. It was.”

“About what time? Was it full dark?”

“Yes.”

“But you saw this man videotaping you?”

“Well, I thought he was. He was up on the cliff and we were down on the beach. He was backlit. There’s this souvenir place up there, and some restaurants. And there were car headlights from the parking lot. He was just this silhouette, standing there by himself. He lit a cigarette, I could see that.”

“Okay,” Marybeth said. “Tell us about the blackmail.”

“How do you guys know about it?” Niki looked at Shane. “Did Jenny tell you? She swore she wasn’t going to. I guess the bitch lied.”

“She didn’t lie,” Shane said quietly. “Not about that, anyway. She never said a word to me about it.”

“We found out just this week from the bank records,” Lauren said. “You both made cash withdrawals on the same dates, of $9,950 each. We made the assumption it was for blackmail payments, and you’ve just confirmed it, as did Mr. Calloway a few minutes ago. So please tell us the details.”

They watched while Niki fished a stick of Nicorette gum out of her purse and popped the stick in her mouth. Her fingers fiddled with the wrapper. “I’m trying to quit smoking,” she said. “Okay, the fucking blackmail. It started a few weeks after the Subaru Ride weekend, when Jenny made the sex tape of us. The thing is, the blackmail wasn’t about that sex tape at all.”

“What was it about?” Lauren asked.

Niki fiddled with the gum wrapper.

“We’re waiting.”

“The other ones,” Niki said.

“What other ones? Other what?”

“The other sex tapes. The porn site.”

Lauren, Shane and Carmen all looked at each other, puzzled. “There were other tapes?” Lauren asked. “What porn site?”

Niki didn’t exactly nod, but she moved her head this way and that. It was an alternative “Yes.”

“They were different,” Niki finally said.

“Different how?”

“Jenny was the one who made the sex tape of her and me at the Subaru thing, and Adele stole it and showed it to the studio.”

“We know that. How were these tapes different?”

“Jenny didn’t make them. Somebody else did. And we didn’t know about it, not at the time. Somebody else was videotaping us. And recording sound, too. Tapes of us … you know … talking. And stuff. No photos.”

“But having sex.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Niki shrugged. “Jenny’s house. My house. On the beach, one time. In Jenny’s car. In this motel we used to go to in Santa Barbara. Once in La Jolla. One time when we skinny-dipped in Bette and Tina’s pool when they weren't home.”

“On the studio lot?”

Niki shook her head no.

“But you had sex there?”

Niki nodded.

“It just never got videotaped or recorded there?”

“No, not that I know of.”

Lauren didn’t want to ask the next question, but had no choice. “Just the two of you in the videos and recordings?”

Niki fiddled with the wrapper, rolled it into a ball. “One time … it was a party.”

“So how many in the video?”

“Five of us. Me and Jenny, and three girls from my posse. They don’t know about the video, or the blackmail. I never told them, so they still don’t know.”

“Do you have any idea how the videotaping was done?”

“Through the windows. You could tell from the videos. It wasn’t done from inside. The one time in Jenny’s car, it was from distance away. You couldn’t tell too much from the video. But there was some kind of bug inside the car. You could hear us. You could hear some of the other ones, too.”

“You mentioned a porn site.”

“Yes, it was on the thumb drive. It wasn’t a porn site that was up, it was a mock-up of one. What it would look like if it was posted. It was called _Lez Girls Starfuckers_. It was pretty simple. The letter said this was what would be posted on the Internet. People would pay to join and watch the videos of us.”

There was silence around the room as everyone thought about this information. As far as Carmen and Shane went, their first thoughts were the same: Jesus, Jenny, how could you be so fucking careless after what happened to us with Mark videotaping us that time he rented the garage studio. Carmen had an additional thought: She knew Jenny sometimes liked a little light bondage. Marina had been the one to first teach her about it, and even though it wasn’t especially Carmen’s thing, light bondage was one of menu items on Carmen’s long list of skills. Carmen took up teaching Jenny where Marina had left off. She also knew that when Jenny was shacking up with Claude, the French travel writer she’d met up in Whistler during the wedding fiasco, Max had walked in on them having sex. Jenny had been lightly tied to the headboard while Claude, wearing a black bustier and nothing else, straddled her and played with her with a riding crop. Carmen knew about it because Jenny had told her, years later, laughing about the horrified look on Max’s face.

“Were these made before or after the Subaru Weekend video Jenny made?”

“Both.”

“How did the blackmailer communicate with both of you?”

“Jenny and I each got an envelope in the mail with a thumb drive in it. There were instructions on the thumb drive.”

“Do you still have the thumb drive?” Lauren asked.

Calloway nodded to The Bitch, who placed a thumb drive on the table. “Yes, we know about fingerprints, but it’s way too late to do anything about it. By the time we got the thumb drive, Niki and and Jenny had already touched it. I strongly suspect it had been wiped, anyway, before it was sent.”

“Do you still have the envelope?”

This time Calloway and The Bitch just let Niki twist in the wind.

“No. I threw it away,” Niki said.

“Before you ask,” Calloway said, “when Niki told us about the blackmail and the thumb drive, we had an IT guy look at the metadata to see if there was any way to trace the video and audio files. There wasn’t, all the metadata had been wiped. I know you’ll want to check it out for yourselves, and we’re happy to let you talk to our IT guy. But I’m just advising you up front that there’s nothing useful on the thumb drive. Believe me, if there was something, we’d have preserved it for you.”

“How long have you known about the blackmail and the thumb drive, Mr. Calloway.”

“I’m happy to answer that, Detective Hancock, but I’d like Niki to answer it first, if I may. Niki?” He was letting her twist again.

Niki looked at her hands. “This week,” she mumbled. “When I heard you wanted to re-interview me.”

“This week?” Lauren said. “You kept the blackmail quiet from your own lawyers for two years?”

Lauren, Marybeth, Carmen and Shane looked at Calloway and the Bitch. They looked at their hands and the paperwork in front of them. It was their way of saying, “Yes, we know our client is fucking dumber than a tree stump. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Niki said nothing.

“We have discussed this aspect of the blackmail and the thumb drive with our client,” Calloway said. “She is aware of the legal implications and the consequences. She has been duly and properly advised. We request that it be noted for the record that she is making these statements voluntarily and of her own free will.”

Marybeth was clearly furious. “Goddamit,” she said, “this is withholding material evidence in a murder investigation. Fuck it, TWO murder investigations.”

“Niki has been made aware of that,” Calloway said calmly. “The first murder, anyway.”

“I am so pissed I can’t see straight,” Marybeth said. “And when you first came in, we said nothing Niki said in her first interview would be held against her.”

“That’s correct. And you said nothing about things she didn’t say. That’s where you are going, correct, Lieutenant?” Calloway asked.

“Damn right.”

“At this point, I’d like the record to note that I could advise my client to decline to answer any more questions. However, I’d like to note that we previously discussed this very possibility of obstruction of justice with her. At this time Miss Stevens declines to invoke her rights, and wishes to proceed with this interview. It is her hope that by fully and freely discussing the blackmail she will contribute to the apprehension of Jenny’s murder, and she hopes your department and the district attorney will take her willing cooperation into account regarding any future charges that may be contemplated.”

Marybeth and Lauren glanced at each other. They figured out what was going. Calloway was saying, “Niki is cooperating because we know you’d never get a good conviction of the obstruction business because of her various and sundry visits to rehab for drug and alcohol. Her defense will be she was too fucked up on booze and pills to know that she was obstructing.”

They knew it was bullshit, but also knew Calloway was right. And in any case, Marybeth and Lauren didn’t care about Niki as long as she wasn’t the murderer.

Marybeth drummed her fingers on the table, thinking.

“All right, let’s move on,” she said. “You got an envelope in the mail. When was this, and what happened next?”

“It was about two weeks after the Pink Subaru Ride,” Niki said.

“You sure of that? Two weeks after?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It was on a Monday. I was in my trailer on the set when Jeremy brought it to me.”

“Jeremy?”

“He’s one of my people,” Niki said. “It was this brown, padded envelope, like you buy in a shipping store. It’s lined with those little plastic bubbles you can pop. It was in with some other mail and stuff. Scripts my agent sent me. Like that.”

“Was Jeremy there when you opened it?”

“No. I didn’t open it until the next morning.”

“Why not?”

Niki looked at her hands. “I was busy Monday night.”

“With Jenny?”

“Yes.”

“After filming ended for the day?”

“Yes.” Fucking our brains out, she might have added, but didn’t need to.

“So the next morning?”

“Jenny came to my trailer. She was really upset, but at first she wouldn’t say why. She asked me, did I get an envelope with something in it. Like what, I said. She says, ‘You’d know if you saw it.’ I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. She said, did I get this envelope with a thumb drive in it. I said Hell if I know. She starts looking around my trailer, she sees my pile of mail on the kitchen counter, she starts going through it. She finds it right away, and starts tearing it open, I say, hey, that’s my mail. She says, just shut the fuck up a minute. She pulls a thumb drive out of this padded envelop. She says, see? This envelope is just like the one I got. See? It says ‘Personal and confidential for Niki Stevens. Your eyes only.’ She hands me the envelope and I look at it, and yeah, that’s what it says. My eyes only. What is it, I say. She says, get your laptop. So I get my laptop, which is on the table in the dining nook, and I start it up, and Jenny hands me the thumb drive. She says open it, play it. So I do. There’s these video files and sound files. She says, play one. So I do. And it comes up, and there’s me and Jenny in her car. It’s night, but, you know, there’s enough light. Whoever took it comes up from behind the car, videos the car license plate and the car type, you know, so you know whose car it is, and then uses the camera to peek into the window, and there we are.”

“There you are what?”

“Me and Jenny. Having sex.” Niki paused and no one said anything. “We … uh… the quality of the video was awful. You couldn’t see a lot, exactly, you couldn’t even tell who it was. But … uh … we were naked, we were going sixty-nine in the front seat. Basically all you could see was my ass, sticking up in the air, and somebody under me. It was only about three minutes long, and then the camera guy backed away, took another view of the license plate, and then the video ended. Jenny said there was a sound file that went with it, and I played it. Somebody had put some kind of microphone inside the car, and you could hear us talking. It started when Jenny and I got into the car at the studio, and we went for a ride. There was no video, just the sound, and it had been edited and condensed, it left out gaps and stuff. But there was some conversation about where we were going, and … you know ... personal stuff. What we were going to do. Sex talk. And then we parked, and uh, started undressing each other, and uh, doing stuff, and you could hear us. Talking, or making, you know. Sounds. You could tell what we were doing.”

“So then what?”

“I’m like, omigod, omigod, I’m freaking out. Jenny says play another one. But my hands are shaking and she just takes over the laptop, starts playing another one. It’s her and me in her bedroom. The camera guy is filming us through the bedroom window. It’s kind of like the Subaru tape.”

“What do you mean?”

Niki didn’t look up. “It’s me, wearing the strap-on. The same one we used at the Subaru weekend. And then Jenny wearing it. You could see our faces this time. You could tell right off who we were.”

“Was there sound?”

“No, not on the video. But when you opened one of the sound files, there was sound of us.”

“How long was the video and sound file?”

“I don’t know. Jenny only played a minute or two, then she fast-forwarded, so we could see that the video was long. I mean, it might have been an hour or more, I really don’t know. I guess the sound, too.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“Jenny played a few more of them. There was one of her and me skinny-dipping in Bette and Tina’s pool one time when they weren’t home. We … you know. Did stuff. It was clear who we were and what we were doing.”

“Where was the camera person shooting from? The back lot line of the house?”

“No. He was near the back porch. Bette and Tina hadn’t started the renovations yet, so there was no deck or stairs up to the deck.”

“He was standing near the driveway?”

“No, the other side.”

Carmen spoke up for the first time. “There was no driveway on that side, and there was a tall privacy fence. They had a lot of plants on that side, and it would have been dark. Somebody could stand there near the corner of the house and be invisible.”

“How would you get there?” Calloway asked.

“Just walk up the side yard from the street. Anybody could do it.”

“But whoever did this would have to know the layout? And they’d have to know Jenny and Niki were back there?”

“Yes,” Carmen said.

“Where were you and Jenny right before you went into the pool?”

“At her house,” Niki said.

“You drove over there? Parked out front or in the driveway?”

“In the driveway.”

“You knew Shane wasn’t going to be home?”

“Yes. Jenny said Shane was at some event somewhere. I don’t remember where, just that Shane wouldn’t be home.”

Everyone looked at Shane, who shrugged. “Could be. I don’t know what date you’re talking about, but sure, it’s entirely possible. Wherever I was, I’d have told Jenny if I was going to be out late or staying over somewhere.”

“What it sounds like,” Marybeth said, “was that someone was watching Shane and Jenny’s house. He saw Niki pull into the driveway and go into the house. Sometime later Niki and Jenny come out, go next door and start cavorting in the pool. He gets his camera, if he already doesn’t have it in his hand, walks around to the street, walks up the side yard into the shadows, and films Niki and Jenny.”

Lauren turned to Niki. “What did Jenny say while you were looking at these videos?”

“She said she opened her envelope the night before, and was up all night, looking at them, worrying, angry, all that. She said she couldn’t sleep. While I was looking at some of the videos she sat down on the settee and started to cry. I said, are you all right? She stood up and came back to my laptop and said, Here, look at this. We’re being blackmailed. So she opens up this other file, and it’s addressed to us. It was the blackmail note with the instructions.”

Calloway interrupted. “If I may, we printed out the blackmail note. Here’s copies.” The Bitch had them ready, and passed a page to everyone in the room. “The file is still on the thumb drive. I’m sure you’re IT people will look at it, but we found nothing useful. And believe me, we tried. But the file is intact. For the record, if it ever becomes necessary in court, we will stipulate that the file and the entire thumb drive is intact and has not been tampered with or altered in any way since it came into our possession.”

“Okay,” Marybeth said. She read the blackmail note silently to herself, then read it out loud:

“‘Dear dykes. You girls look like your having a lot of fun.’ Spelled your wrong. ‘That’s good. Its going to cost you and lucky for you can afford it. Unless you want these porn vids of you ladies eating snatch all over southen California’ – misspelled southern – ‘eating snatch all over southern California sent to every media outlet as well as creating a hot new porn sight’ – misspelled site – ‘your going to each pay $9,950 each per month in cash on sixth of every month. ‘Each pay each.’ Your first payment due this Monday October 6. Go to bank get out $9,950 in cash small bills not in sequence. Put in brown paper lunch bag buy from store. On afternoon of Oct 6 I will text you with location to drop off cash. Drive to location follow text instruction. Do NOT contact police, do not even think about staking out drop off location. If I se anything , see with one e, suspicious deal is off and I will send videos out and set up Niki Fucks Jenny porn web sight, see preview. Next month same thing. Go to bank on 6th, get cash etc. Yes I am blackmailing you but I am keeping your payment low enough it is affordable for you. I know from trade papers Niki signed big contract, Jenny got screenplay deal etc so I know you can afford this. I am not going to bankrup you or bleed you dry. Just consider a business expense. I will text on Oct 6.”

“There’s a lot of stuff here our profiler can work on,” Lauren said. “The guy’s syntax and spelling. I can see a few other things right off the bat.”

“Me, too. We can run it all through the databases,” Marybeth said, “but I’m guessing we won’t find anything, even though blackmail and celebrity blackmail are major growth industries in LA. But we’ll do the due diligence. Niki, what did you and Jenny say after she showed you this? Niki, are you all right?”

Niki wasn’t all right. “I’m … I’m…” She put her hand over her mouth, looked around, saw a trash can at the far end of the room and ran to it. She just made it in time, holding it up and puking into it as Calloway and The Bitch ran to her to support her.

“Lieutenant,” Calloway said, “I think we need a break.”

“Yes, fine, I’ll stop the video.”

“Bobbi,” Calloway said to The Bitch, “can you take Niki to the ladies room?”

“I’ll go, too, follow me,” Lauren said, going to Niki and helping Bobbi escort Niki down the hall. Niki was able to walk under her own power, but her face was pale and her legs were shaky. Marybeth went to the trash receptacle with the puke in it, took it out of the room and returned a minute later with a different receptacle.

“Mr. Calloway, do you and Mr. Cartwright want some coffee? We have water and a soda machine, too, if you want anything. I think we’re officially on coffee break time-out.”

“I’m fine, Lieutenant, thanks for asking. Elliott, get something if you want,” Calloway said.

“I’m good, thanks,” the Briefcase Carrier said. If the boss doesn’t get anything, nobody gets anything. Rule.

“I’m going to stretch my legs,” Calloway said. He wandered casually out of the room and went down the hall a short distance. The Briefcase Carrier went with him.

Marybeth perched on the edge of the conference table near Shane and Carmen. “What do you guys think?” Marybeth asked quietly, so she couldn’t be overheard. “Was that an act? Can she throw up on cue?”

Carmen looked at Shane, the expert on unspoken messages and body language.

Shane shook her head no. “I don’t think so. For one thing, Niki has never been such a great actress anyway. If that was an act, it was Oscar-worthy. I think it was real. And I can see why. She’s re-living that morning. Fuck, I’d get sick, too, if that was me on those videos.”

“Carmen?”

“I agree with Shane. Anyway, if it was an act I don’t see the point. But there’s something else, it has nothing to do with Niki getting sick.”

“What’s that?

Carmen looked at Shane. “Shane, I think we have to tell Lieutenant Duffy about Mark and his tapes.”

Shane closed her eyes and exhaled heavily. “I know. I was thinking about that, too.”

“Not in front of Niki and her lawyers, though,” Carmen said.

“Can you give me a one-sentence summary?” Marybeth asked.

Carmen nodded. “Way back when, when Jenny and I were having our affair, Shane and Jenny rented out the garage studio to a guy named Mark. He had a videotape business, he made these scuzzy exploitation flicks, College Coeds Go Crazy, that kind of shit. Anyway, he put up secret cameras around the house and secretly videotaped all of us. He claimed he was making this documentary about lesbians, and maybe he was. But there were videos he made, some fairly innocent, Jenny and Shane and me, just doing normal stuff around the house, talking, cooking. But there were videos of us having sex, too. Me and Jenny. Shane and, uh, some girls. One or two parties they had. Mark actually filmed those in person, we knew we were being taped. They were like interviews. Anyway, one day he told Jenny about the secret tapes and the spy cameras. She kept it secret while we went on a vacation cruise for a week, and only when we got back a week later did she tell us. Mark took the cameras down and we made him give us all the videos, and we burned them. The point is, Mark was a scumbag, and he made secret videos. Obviously, he also learned a lot about Jenny, and he knew the house and the grounds and Bette and Tina’s house, and people skinny dipping in their pool.”

“So we have to consider him a suspect, too. Do you know where this Mark is now?”

Carmen looked at Shane, who shook her head. “No. After he finally moved out I never heard from him again. I have no idea where he is. But he shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

Calloway and the Briefcase Carrier walked back into the room. “Niki’s coming back,” Calloway said.


	23. Payday

When Niki Stevens came back into the conference room she looked better than when she went out. Calloway trailed behind her, followed by the Briefcase Carrier and the two Valkyrie shield maidens, Lauren and The Bitch. One Valkyrie carried a gun and a badge, had hand-to-hand combat training and a black belt. The dangerous one carried a briefcase.

“Sorry, everybody,” Niki said. “This is all very, uh, you know. Sorry I lost my cookies.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marybeth said. “You okay to continue? Would you like some water or something?” Let the record show that Marybeth was more solicitous than Lauren had ever seen her. Clearly, she was Good Cop, playing Niki.

“That would be good,” Niki said. “I don’t suppose you have any cucumber water?”

Let the record show that Carmen, Shane, Lauren and Marybeth didn’t laugh or roll their eyes.

“I’ve got a stash of Gatorade,” Lauren said, saving the moment. “Let me get you one. You probably need to replace some electrolytes.” She left the conference room.

“Anybody else need anything?” Marybeth asked. Carmen and Shane had re-loaded their caffeine supplies and were good to go.

“I’ll get you a water, boss,” the Briefcase Carrier said, leaving the conference room to go find Lauren. He returned a minute later with three bottles of water and followed by Lauren with two Gatorades.

“Okay,” Marybeth said when everyone had settled. “Recording equipment going on.” She pushed the relevant start buttons. “Niki, we were talking about the blackmail letter. What did you and Jenny say when she showed it to you?”

“Like I said, she was real upset and had been crying. I was upset and maybe crying, too. I said, What are we going to do? She said something like, I don’t know, we’ll have to pay it, I guess.”

“This was about two weeks or so after the Subaru Ride weekend?”

“Yes, about that.”

“Did you know at that time that Adele had stolen a copy of the video you and Jenny made? The one Adele used to get Jenny fired from the director’s job?”

“No, we didn’t know Adele had stolen it until that meeting when she showed it to William and Aaron at the studio. That was the first time we even knew copies existed. Or even that it had been stolen. I don’t know if ‘stolen’ is even the right word. Adele downloaded it from the camera, right? Is that considered stealing?”

“Yes,” Marybeth said. “When Adele showed William and Aaron the video, she said she had twenty-five copies ready to be mailed out to major media people unless Jenny was fired and Adele hired to be the new director.”

“Yes.”

“So what I’m suggesting is, it appears you and Jenny didn’t suspect Adele of being the thumb drive blackmailer, because you didn’t know she had downloaded the Subaru video.”

“Uh, yes. Right. We didn’t know. So no, we didn’t think about her then.”

“Did you discuss it later, after Jenny got fired?”

“Yes, a couple days later, after Jenny got fired we did. See, we had already made one blackmail payment, and we were expecting to get a text about arrangements for the second one.”

“So what did you two say?”

“We were talking about what Adele did, and I said something like, ‘That fucking cunt’ – uh, sorry.”

“Go ahead. It doesn’t matter,” Marybeth said.

“I said, ‘That fucking cunt not only got your job, she got twenty grand out of us, too.’ Jenny says, ‘I’ve been thinking it over. I don’t think Adele sent the thumbs drives. I think it’s somebody else.’ I said why? Jenny says, ‘Adele used the Subaru video to get my job, but she was blackmailing the studio, not me and not you, not directly any way. And that was the only video Adele had. But the person blackmailing us had a dozen videos of us and almost as many sound files, but the Subaru video wasn’t one of them.’ She said she thought Adele and the blackmailer were not the same person, because the videos were pretty different. She said there was nothing on the thumb drive that was shot on the studio lot, when there could have been. Jenny said she thought the blackmailer didn’t have access to the studio lot. Adele did, obviously, and if she had been creeping around videotaping or bugging us having sex, she could have done it on the lot, in one of our trailers. Then Jenny says, besides, Adele could have told Aaron and William there were lots of videos of us, but she didn’t. Jenny said she was convinced the Subaru video was the only sex tape Adele knew about. In all the studio bullshit that went on, it was only ever the one videotape being talked about.”

“So Jenny came to the conclusion there were two independent blackmailers, only one of whom was Adele. The other blackmailer was somebody else. She concluded you were being blackmailed by two separate people over two different sets of sex tapes.”

Niki wouldn’t look up from her hands, embarrassed and humiliated.

“What else did Jenny say?”

“She said she thought Adele’s blackmail thing was all over, because she had been fired and Adele was directing the movie. She said we had to worry about the other blackmailer.”

“Did she have any idea who that might be?”

“No. Not at first. We talked about it, who it could be, but we didn’t have any good ideas. She asked me if it could be somebody in my posse, you know, the people I hang around with. I said no way. I mean, they hang around all the time, and um… this is difficult to talk about. Let’s just say, they’ve seen worse than what’s on that thumb drive, and not just me, but other celebrities, too, doing stuff. So if it was one of them, it wouldn’t be me and Jenny, it would be me and some other people whose names I don’t want to say. And anyway, there’s three girls from my posse in the one party video, but it wasn’t shot from inside the room, it was somebody outside at the window. If it was one of my group they wouldn’t need to do that. They’d just walk into the room and start taping.”

“Did that ever happen?” Marybeth asked.

Niki wouldn’t look up. “Sometimes.”

“So there’s more sex tapes out there somewhere?”

“Look, you guys need to understand something,” Niki said. “I’ve been photographed and videotaped ever since I was seven years old. Modeling, kiddy beauty pageants, TV ads, you name it. I’m so used to being taped and videoed I hardly even notice it anymore.”

“So there’s video of you out there?”

“Yes and no.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Marybeth asked with some attitude.

“Marybeth,” Calloway said quietly.

“It means there’s stuff, but not with my face on it.”

“Can you elaborate?”

Niki sighed. “When I was a teenager, there was this guy. We did … you know. He liked to take photos. A couple times he made videos. But I never let him shot anything with my face, and anyway he didn’t care. About my face. He just wanted … you know. And anyway, I wasn’t famous back then.”

“How do you know your face wasn’t in anything he shot?”

“Oh, I looked at it. The photos, you know? He let me see them. He… we… liked that. I saw the videos, too. He just wanted … you know. Down there. So to answer your question, he couldn’t blackmail me, and anyway I haven’t seen him in years.”

“How old were you?”

“Wait a minute, Niki, don’t answer that,” Callow jumped in. “Marybeth, we all know the answer, and it’s not relevant to why we’re here. I hope you’ll agree we’re all better off concentrating on the present murder case, not, ah, something that might have happened X number of years ago.”

“Cal, I’m already bending over so far backward I need to look up to see my own ass.”

“I know. And I’m sorry about that. But you know I can’t let my client go down that road. Let’s work on solving these murders.”

Marybeth looked at Calloway.

“It’s Chinatown, Marybeth,” Calloway said.

Shane looked at Carmen.

“Shush,” Carmen barely breathed. “It’s that movie quote. I’ll explain later.”

“Yeah,” Marybeth said. “Chinatown.” She turned to Niki. “Are there any porn films of you out there with your face? Anything from the last few years, since you turned 18?”

“Not now, no,” Niki said. “Right after Jenny got killed, I told everybody we have to destroy any videos you guys shot. I didn’t tell them about me being blackmailed, I told them I was worried about the police getting warrants if anybody got busted for something.” Coke, Ecstasy, Special K, Mollie, Rohypnol, meth, some new shit a Walter White type might come up with. Drunk driving, Drugged driving. Snorting in a school zone. Indecent exposure while peeing on a rival’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Fellatio at a charity auction. It was Hollywood, anything could happen.

Marybeth was about to speak when she saw the look on Calloway’s face. The both knew what the other was going to say. Marybeth was going to tell Niki she had asked her posse to destroy evidence relevant to a murder investigation. Obstruction of justice. Calloway looked at her, nodded and closed his eyes as if to say, yes, I know. My client is dumber than a redwood tree. But he was also saying, I have my reasons for letting her tell you this stuff, so relax, it won’t matter.

So Marybeth said nothing.

“So I guess the answer is no, as far as I know there’s no more sex tape stuff out there. There shouldn’t be, anyway. If there is, I don’t know about it.”

“After you got the blackmail envelope, did you have sex with Jenny again?”

Niki nodded.

“Weren’t you worried about being videotaped?”

“You better believe it,” Niki said. “We were fucking paranoid after that. No more cars. Nothing at Jenny’s house. We went to hotels, where there were no windows unless it was, like, a tenth floor suite with a balcony and nobody on it. Where there was no way we could be videotaped, and no bugs or listening devices because nobody would know where we were going. We closed the drapes. And Jenny knew some tech guy at the studio, and she bought this gizmo from him that detected if you were being recorded. You see them in spy movies. So she had one of them, and we would turn it on and make sure there were no bugs.”

“Jenny knew about that stuff?”

“No, not much at first. She said she had seen spy movies, and all, but she went out and educated herself about spying and bugging, and talked to people about it. She told them she was a writer and director, which was true, and she was researching stuff for a movie. She said everybody believed her, and why shouldn’t they? There’s hundreds of writers running all over Hollywood researching and writing spy movies and cop shows. There’s stores right in town you can walk into and buy almost any kind of spy video and bugging stuff you can imagine. Anyway, all the sound and camera people on movie sets know how to do all that stuff, too. But Jenny didn’t think it was any of them, because there was nothing from us at the studio. And she said the blackmail stuff looked amateurish. I thought that, too. The movie people I know, they'd be ashamed to do that unprofessional kind of work. The web site mock-up was okay, but the videos, they were worse than porn web cam shit.”

“Did Jenny have anything else to say?” Marybeth asked.

“One thing. She said she didn’t like the idea of the blackmailer sending stuff out to the media too much, although that would be bad enough. I said, why not? She said there would be stories all over the media but the vast majority would only report on it, and they couldn’t show too much of the videos, they couldn’t really show the hardcore parts without pixelating it and putting on black boxes over our private parts, or whatever. As awful as that was, there was something worse. I said what? She said it would be the porn site, of her and me having sex. They might match up the sound files to the videos, too, so you could watch us and hear us talking and stuff. She just didn’t want to be the co-star of a porn web site. I said there’s already porn sites of celebrities, where they PhotoShop somebody’s head on some porno actress’s body, but everybody knows those are fakes. She said yes, but ours wouldn’t be fakes, they’d be real, and people could tell that. I said what about getting a lawyer, suing and getting an injunction to shut the site down. So Jenny says, by the time we got the injunction, if we could even find the fucking web site and somebody to sue, the stuff would be copied to other web sites all over the Internet, it could be on some Russian or Hungarian web site somewhere. She said once it was out, it would be out there forever and nothing we could do about it. So she says, that’s why I’m going to pay the blackmail, and you have to do it, too. She said if we didn’t and the videos got posted, neither one of us would ever work again, not in anything legitimate. Then she says, you don’t want to become a porn star, do you? Because that’s all I could do. And she didn’t want to become a porn director or writer, and certainly not a performer. She said she had once done something like that she regretted, worked in a strip club, and she would swallow poison before she ever did that again. So that’s when we decided we had to pay the blackmail.”

“How did you make the payments after you got the cash out of the bank? You said you got text messages.”

“Yes. We got the cash out first thing in the morning, and then we sweated bullets all day. It was a work day, and we were on the set. We each had almost ten thousand in cash and we didn’t know what to do with it, we couldn’t walk around all day with it in our pants pockets. Jenny sent a production assistant out to the store to buy the brown paper lunch bags.”

“Did the production assistant ask why she needed them?”

Niki gave Marybeth a funny look. “You don’t know much about movies and directors. Even sane directors.”

Carmen cut in before Niki dug herself too much deeper. “What she means is, when the director gives you a chore to do or an errand to run, the PA just goes and does it. If Jenny had said go find me fifty pounds of whale shit and bring it back wrapped in a pink polka dot ribbon, the PA would have come back an hour later dripping wet with fifty pounds of whale sit, a ribbon, and a receipt.”

“Okay, got it. Jenny says go get me some lunch bags, period, no questions asked.”

“Right. So anyway, we were in her trailer and wondering what to do with the cash all day, so we lifted up the bed mattress and under it, you know, there’s this storage trap door, so we both put our cash in there. The trailer was a rental, and even if people came and went in and out all day, even when Jenny wasn’t in it, nobody was going to lift up the mattress and look in there. So anyway, we worked all day, and about six o’clock both our cellphones pinged with the same text message. It said I was to take the money in the paper bag and drive to Griffith Park, and go up to that astronomy observatory at the top. It’s the one that’s been in lots of movies. This was at about 10 p.m., after it got dark. I was supposed to park then walk to the main doors. At the left of the doors there was a trash can, and I was supposed to drop the bag into it. Then I was supposed to pretend I wanted to go in. I would walk to the door and somebody would tell me it was closing if it wasn’t already closed and locked. So then I was supposed to go back to the car and drive away. So that’s what I did.”

“Was the observatory closed?”

“Not when I got there. I was a few minutes early. But people were coming out, and somebody told me they were closing. I waited a few minutes until everybody was gone, then put the bag in the trash can, and left.”

“I know the answer, but I have to ask it anyway. Did you see anyone hanging around? Especially as you were leaving?”

“No. I kind of looked around, but there was nobody.”

“Nobody recognized you?”

“Oh, no. I had on sunglasses and this big floppy hat. Grungy clothes.”

“Okay, the next drop.”

“We got a text about six, same as before. This time I was supposed to go to the museum at the Hollywood Bowl. There was this trash can. I was supposed to pretend I wanted to go in. Even though there was a concert at the Bowl, the museum was a short distance away, and closed at five o’clock. I learned that when I went there and there was a sign, off-season winter hours, ten a.m. to five p.m. I dropped the lunch bag in the trash can and left.”

“The next one?”

“That was December, right? We were worried because we discovered the sixth was a Saturday. But I think it was Tuesday before we got a text message that said get the money on Monday the eighth, and that night I was to go back to the Griffith Park Observatory again, same thing, ten o’clock, put the bag in the trash can.”

“The next one?”

“Same thing, but back to the Hollywood Bowl Museum. There was no concert that night so it was pretty deserted. But I didn’t see anybody.”

“And the February drop?”

“Back to the observatory.”

“So he was mixing up the two sites.”

“Yes.”

“And then something happened, because there was no drop in March. So what happened?”

Niki frowned. “Jenny started getting… I don’t know what the word is. Difficult? More than she usually was, I mean. And we had an argument. Right after the drop in February, she said one day she’d been thinking. She said so far we had paid nearly a hundred thousand, and enough was enough. She said she wanted to hire a private detective to find out who was blackmailing us. I told her she was crazy. She said this was Hollywood, and there were lots of really good private detective agencies who handled celebrity problems all the time, and that they were discreet and careful. She said for, like, eighty or ninety years, ever since Hollywood began, there were sex scandals and lots of bad stuff, and some of it was never ever reported because the celebrities or the studios or the press agents hired private detectives to deal with it. She said she’d rather we each paid the next ten thousand to a detective agency, if it even came to that much money, rather than to the blackmailer.” She paused to take a drink of water. The room was silent.

“So anyway, we started arguing. I said it was a terrible idea, and I didn’t want some detective running around talking to all my friends and stuff. Jenny asked me if I had told anybody we were being blackmailed. I said no, but she didn’t seem to believe me, and we argued some more about that, was I sure I hadn’t gotten drunk or stoned and blabbed to somebody. I said no, of course not. And I said I sure as hell didn’t want any damn private detective to see the sex tapes or the porn web site mock-up. She agreed with that part, that she wouldn’t give the detective the thumb drive.”

“When did this discussion take place?” Marybeth asked.

Niki shrugged. “After Christmas. I mean, it wasn’t just one conversation. We talked about it a couple times.”

“Over a week? A month?”

Niki thought about it. “A couple weeks, I guess, or maybe a month. January, I guess. Then one day Jenny says, ‘Okay, you’re right. We’ll forget about the private detective. But I’m getting tired paying, enough is enough. We have to figure out how to do a final payoff and get him to destroy the tapes, or give them back to us.’”

“And did you figure out a way?”

“No,” Niki said. “Anyway, not that I know of. We talked a little bit about it, but we didn’t come up with anything.”

“And then you made the February payment.”

“Yes.”

“Anything unusual about it? Same procedure as before?”

“Yes. We got the cash, waited for the text instructions, I drove to the observatory, like before. I made the drop, and went home.”

“And now we come to the March payment, or lack of one, when something changed. What happened?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know. But about a week or ten days before the date we were supposed to make the next payment, Jenny calls me and says we don’t have to do it, she’s working on something, and she’ll let me know the next step.”

“What else did she say?”

“Well, about the blackmail, not much. Nothing I can think of.”

“But about something else?”

“Oh, God, yes. You have no idea what a crazy time that was. I don’t know if Shane or Carmen told you about how Jenny asked me to try to seduce Dylan, to see if she was really going to be loyal to Helena. Alice and Tasha broke up. Alice was pissed at Jenny about some script she says Jenny stole. Uh, what else? Shane, help me out here.”

Shane stirred. “January and February were just a total shitstorm. Like Niki says, Alice and Tasha broke up, Alice claimed Jenny stole her script and the half million she got for it should be hers. Tina was fighting with the studio about the missing negatives. Bette and Tina were trying to adopt a baby in Nevada, but that fell through. Then they said they were moving to New York. There was the whole Helena-and-Dylan thing. There was the Alice-Tasha-Jamie thing. There was the baby shower for Max, and then Tom walked out on him. Jenny thought I was cheating on her with Niki.” She turned to Carmen. “What am I forgetting?”

“You and Mollie breaking up. Kit and her relationship with Sunset Boulevard--”

“Who?” Marybeth asked.

“Oh. Sunset Boulevard,” Carmen said. “He’s a guy, but a cross-dresser, and Kit was maybe going out with him. Bette’s friend Kelly was opening an art gallery, and Jenny claimed Bette cheated on Tina--”

“Yes, we already know about that. We found out that the video Jenny had cleared Bette.”

“Yes. Anyway, yes, Shane’s right. Those last two or three months were basically non-stop chaos in all their lives. I hate to put it this way, but Jenny and Niki being blackmailed over some sex tapes, well, that was just one more small squall against the backdrop of the shitstorm. It was like saying it's raining in Miami when all of Florida is being hit by a hurricane.”

Marybeth drummed her fingers on the table, as everybody thought about things. “All right,” she finally said. “Let’s move on. Niki, tell us about the negatives and the night you put them in Jenny’s attic.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Just about everything. Let’s start with your motive. Your reasons for stealing the negatives, and your reason for being angry at Jenny. Or anybody else.”

“It’s complicated,” Niki began, and stopped. Everyone let her stew on it in silence. This ought to be good, Carmen thought.

“Okay, first, I, uh, I was worried about the movie _. Lez Girls_. I had been worried about it for a while.”

“In what way?”

“That it wasn’t good. That it was going to embarrass my career.”

“Because of the lesbianism?”

“No, not that. There’s lots of actresses who are or aren’t lesbians doing movies about lesbianism. I mean, look at Cate Blanchett. All those women on that TV show on Sunday night. I just thought ... Well, I thought _Lez Girls_ just wasn’t very good. It wasn’t about being a lezzie film or not a lezzie film, it was about being a good film or a POS. Sorry, you know what POS means?”

Marybeth nodded.

“Okay. Anyway, some other people I knew said the same thing. People in my circle of friends and advisors. They worried about it. And, uh, some of my management people, they wanted me to pretend to be straight, you know. They didn’t care about the movie character, just me in real life. So there was that stuff. And, well, all the drama on the set. The paparazzi. That thing with the mud wrestling. Just … everything in general.”

“Okay. Then what?”

Niki looked at her hands. “I don’t want you to think I’m trying to put the blame on somebody else. I take responsibility for what I did. But … somebody suggested to me, maybe I could just make the problem go away. By, uh, you know. Stealing the negatives.”

“Somebody suggested it to you?” Marybeth asked.

“Yes.” Niki looked at Calloway. “Do I have to say who? There’s this agreement, the studio isn’t pressing charges, right?”

“No, the studio isn’t pressing charges. Marybeth, may I suggest we set aside the identity of the person who put the idea into Niki’s head for some later time? It was somebody in her circle of friends, that’s all, and my understanding is this person had nothing else to do with anything that later transpired.”

Marybeth thought it over. “Okay, for the time being, we’ll hold it aside. One of your friends says, ‘Hey, why don’t you steal the negatives?’ And that’s all he or she said. That about right?”

“Yes.”

“Were you in any sort of sexual relationship with this person?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Then what happened?”

Niki looked at Calloway again. “Do I have to say this next part?”

“Yes,” Calloway said quietly. “We talked about it. Go ahead. You need to do this.”

Niki sighed. “I know somebody. At the studio. I talked to him. I asked for advice on how I could steal the movie. He explained where the master negatives are kept, and all that. He gave me some ideas.”

“Did he help you steal the negatives?”

“No. He didn’t do anything else. He just told how I could do it if I wanted to. All he did was explain the process, and point out times things could happen. He said they are pretty safe when they are stored. He said they were vulnerable when they were being moved. See, I didn’t exactly steal them by going to a place and taking them. I had them delivered somewhere. That part was how he said I could do it. Well, what he actually said was, ‘How somebody could do it.’”

“I see. Is it possible he became the blackmailer? After you stole the negatives, he would have known right away it was you when word got out.”

“No, it wasn’t him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because … because I took care of him.”

“What does that mean?”

“I … uh … you know. Made him happy. And so he wouldn’t talk.”

“How? Are you suggesting sex? Drugs? Money?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, which?”

“Sex. Drugs.”

“Not money?”

“No, not money.”

“I see. Sex and drugs, but not money.”

“No. I mean yes. I mean, no, not money.”

Marybeth thought about it. In Hollywood, blowjobs and smack were alternative forms of compensation, along with parking spaces and reservations at Spago, residuals, deferred payment, and more blowjobs. She looked at Calloway.

“I know,” Calloway said. “Aiding and abetting. And the deal with the studio doesn’t include him, because they don’t even know about him. I’ll tell you this much: He never worked on _Les Girls_ , he had nothing to do with the movie. He just works at the studio. We’ll give him up to you later, if you still want it. But let’s say he’s not the blackmailer. It’s the killer we all want, not some guy who got a free snort and fucked a movie star.”

“It’s just getting worse and worse, Cal.”

“I know. I agree.”

Marybeth sighed. “All right. What happened next?” She didn’t tell Niki they already knew.

“I called a messenger service to arrange for them to pick up the negatives. When I knew they could do it, I typed up a letter to the studio telling them to give the negatives to the messenger service.”

“Name?”

“Eastside Messenger Service.”

“What did you do with the letter?”

“I faxed it to the studio.”

“You signed it?

“Oh, no. Anyway, my name wouldn’t work.”

“So who signed it?”

“Well … I did. But I signed Tina’s name. The order would have had to come from her, not me.”

“So you’re saying your forged Tina’s signature?”

“Well, not ‘forged,’ exactly. I mean, I didn’t try to make it look like her name. I just typed her name, and the signature was just a scribble.”

“And then you faxed it.”

“Yes.”

“Then what? What did the messenger service do?”

“They delivered them to a film company out in the valley.”

“What film company?”

“I think they were called Wilson something.”

“Wilson/Cramer Productions?”

“Yes, that sounds right.”

“Who are they?”

“Uh ... just some production company. I knew somebody who worked there. In the front office.”

“What kind of production company? What kind of movies do they make?”

Niki looked down. “Porn,” she said quietly.

“They’re a porn outfit?”

“Yes.”

“And you know somebody who works there?”

“Well, I did. I don’t think they’re in business anymore.”

“And what did your friend there do?”

“Uh, the negatives were delivered there. And the next day I sent somebody out to pick them up.”

“Who?”

“Just somebody from my posse. She had no idea what it was about. I just told her to drive out there, pick up a box, and bring it back to the house.”

“So the messenger service delivered the negatives to the receptionist at Wilson/Cramer?”

“Yes.”

“No name on the delivery?”

Niki looked down. “Jennifer Schecter. I made it look like Jenny was the one receiving the negatives.”

“And your friend at Wilson/Cramer went along with this, is that it? Accept a package on behalf of Jennifer Schecter, give it to your posse pickup person. And your pickup person claimed to be Jennifer Schecter?”

“Yes.”

“Your friend do this for money?”

“No.”

“Sex and drugs?”

“Uh, no.”

“No?”

Niki wouldn’t look up.

“Sex. No drugs.”

“Your friend a man or woman?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. But I want to know.”

“Woman.”

“How do you know her?”

“She worked on a movie set I was on a few years ago.”

“You had a relationship with her?”

“No, nothing serious.”

“She ever been to your house? Your parties?”

“Yes, a few times.”

Marybeth looked at Calloway. “Receiving stolen goods.”

“I know,” Calloway said. “We’ll give her to you if you want her. But it’s really small potatoes, and you’ll have to prove she knew what was in the package was stolen.”

Marybeth sighed and turned to Niki. “You were really, seriously pissed at Jenny to do all that, to set her up like that. Why?”

Niki continued to be fascinated with her own hands, as she had been through this whole thing. “She … we … ”

Marybeth let her stew.

“The night before. After the big scene when Jenny gave her speech, and I was ... um … with Shane, out on the balcony, and Jenny caught us. And then Jenny threw Shane out of the house, and I was there, but I left, right after Shane did. But I went back later, and then Jenny, well, she kind of attacked me. I mean, sexually. Not attacked, but, you know. She took my dress off, and pushed me onto the bed, and, uh. You know, we did it. A couple times. She was really, uh, I guess aggressive, is the word. She was the top. I mean, it was a little weird. Little, tiny Jenny, going at it like a bulldyke, and me the bottom. And then, in the morning, I said I was really touched when Jenny said I had broken her heart--”

Across the room, Shane laid her head down on her arms, burying her face.

“—and Jenny said I wasn’t the one who broke her heart She said I was a brat. She said I was self-something. Self-absorbed or something. She said our relationship during the movie was just a ‘shomance.’ She said it didn’t mean anything. She was just fucking me all night long just, like, a revenge fuck. Like a power trip.”

“Wait a minute,” Lauren said. She had been silent during most of the interview. “Wait. You and Jenny spent the night together? That night? The whole night?”

“Uh, yes. I mean, I went out for a little while with some of my friends. We had, you know. Wait a minute.” Niki leaned over to Calloway and whispered something in his ear. Calloway nodded and put a hand on her arm.

“Niki is about to describe a possibly hypothetical situation,” he said. “Go ahead, Niki.”

“My friends and me, we may have smoked some stuff. We may have been a little stoned.”

Marybeth sighed. “Got it. Hypothetical. Get to the point.”

“We got the munchies and went out to this coffee shop. And Shane was there. And we talked to her a little, and then Jenny texted me and told me to come over. I asked Shane, did she think Jenny was sincere, did Jenny love me or not, and all. And Shane said, if Jenny texted me, then she was sincere. So I left and went over to Jenny’s house. And then, we, you know. We did it, like I said. We had sex. Like, rough sex. Shane, you remember that part in the restaurant, right?”

Shane raised her head. She looked awful. But she nodded. “Yes. The coffee shop. Yes.”

“There’s something wrong here,” Lauren said. “Wait a minute. I’ve got to go check something. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay, everybody take a break. Back here in five minutes,” Marybeth said.

When they reconvened Lauren had a document in her hands. “When I was reading through the case file I found this deposition from Mollie that Sean took. It was about Shane’s coat that Mollie returned and that Jenny threw up in the attic on top of the film canisters. It had Mollie’s letter in the pocket.”

“Okay, what about it?” Marybeth asked.

Lauren had found the page in the deposition she wanted. “Here it is. Mollie’s at Jenny’s door, she asks where Shane is. She says Jenny told her Shane and Niki were at the Chateau Marmont, fucking. Quote unquote.”

“What?” Shane burst out, angry. “Jenny said what?”

“Mollie says Jenny told her you and Niki were at the--”

“That’s a fucking lie!” Shane said. “I was right next door, at Bette and Tina’s house. Jenny had just thrown me out. Tina and Bette wanted me to stay at their house, because I had nowhere to go. Then they got into an argument over whether me going down on Niki out on the patio was okay or not, because Jenny had broken up with Niki ten days earlier. I had my clothes in a fucking plastic garbage bag. Jenny knew I was next door. She watched me walk over there. I saw her looking out the window. You can ask Bette and Tina. They’ll tell you.”

“And later on you went to a coffee shop, and ran into Niki?”

“Yes! Bette and Tina were arguing and I left so they could cool down. It was just like Niki said. Niki got the text, and she left to go to Jenny’s house. You can even ask Niki’s friends. She was there with three or four other people, just like she said.”

“Hold up, Shane,” Lauren said. “I believe you and Niki completely, and I’m certain Tina and Bette can confirm your stories. The point is, Jenny told a big lie to Mollie. And there’s one other thing Jenny said.”

“Oh, Christ,” Shane said, putting her face down on her arms on the table. Carmen reached out and rubbed Shane’s back.

“According to the deposition, Mollie says that Jenny then told Mollie that Shane and Niki had hooked up during the Subaru Ride Weekend, and that Niki and Shane quote unquote had been fooling around ever since.”

Shane looked up again. Her face had gone white, and she was furious.

“Hold on, Shane. I know, I know. One last thing. Mollie says in the deposition that when Jenny said that, Mollie knew she was lying. She says she knew it was a lie because Mollie had spent the Subaru weekend with you, and not only that, everybody knew Jenny and Niki were shacked up together. She said that you and she had a relationship for a while thereafter, and there was no way you were fooling around with Niki. She says when she realized Jenny was lying to her, she completely disregarded it when Jenny said you and Niki were at the Chateau Marmont. She says there was no point in discussing anything with Jenny if Jenny was going to quote lie her fucking ass off, unquote, and she just handed Jenny the jacket and asked her to give it to you, and then left.”

There was silence around the room. No one wanted to look at Niki or Shane, who, judging from her shaking shoulders, had started to cry. Then Shane got up and walked out of the conference room. After a moment, Carmen got up and followed her down the hallways to the elevator lobby. Shane pushed the down button, and when the elevator came she got on. Carmen followed. Neither one said anything. On the ground floor Shane walked outside, drying her cheeks with the backs of her hands. There was a bench at the bus stop on the corner. Shane went to it and sat down. Carmen sat down beside her. It was sunny and warm. Carmen crossed her legs and closed her mind to everything, enjoying the sunshine. A minute later, Calloway, Niki, The Briefcase carrier and The Bitch came out of the building and walked past them. Calloway stopped.

“Marybeth declared a lunch break. We’ll be back in an hour.”

“Good idea. Great, thanks,” Carmen said.

“Can we get you anything?”

“No, we’re good. Thanks for asking,” Carmen said.

Niki came over. “Shane, I’m really sorry.”

Shane looked up at her, nodded. Niki and her group left, walking down the next block to a restaurant.

“I don’t suppose you have a joint,” Shane said, gathering herself together.

“In front of a police station? No. Sorry. But I’ll be happy to break into the evidence room and get some.”

“A cigarette?”

“Don’t smoke. Never did. You knew that.”

“Yeah. Just thought I’d take a one-in-a-million shot.”

“I understand.”

“No booze, either, I guess. A pint of tequila?”

“Sorry.”

“A gun?”

“I left my shoulder holster and .38 Smith and Wesson at home. I’ve got a derringer in my boot. Oops, never mind. I’m not wearing boots. Who do you want to shoot? Jenny’s already dead. I’m thinking about shooting her myself. And even if I had a gun I wouldn’t give it to you right now anyway.”

“Why not?”

“You’d shoot yourself. It’s my gun, I’d get in trouble, I’d have to answer lots of questions, and they wouldn’t give it back to me. And, you know. The blood. It’s hard to get out blood stains.”

Shane finally straightened up. “Okay, you made me laugh.”

They sat in silence for a while, and then a bus came. Carmen waved it on.

“Does it bother you when they talk about me and Mollie?” Shane finally asked.

“No,” Carmen said. “Why should it?”

“I don’t know. I just thought … I don’t know.”

“You’re trying to say, did it bother me to know you were in love with somebody else beside me. After me. No, it didn’t. I think it was Alice first told me you and Mollie were serious, but maybe it was Tina, I don’t remember. Anyway, they said you and Mollie were becoming a thing. They said she was really, really smart. They said they liked her. They knew I was over you. I said good, I’m glad Shane found somebody.”

“But you knew I’d fuck it up.”

“Shane, don’t go there.”

“I told you, once.”

“Told me once what?”

“How love fucks you up. About how I never wanted to be in love with anybody. I’d screw it up and hurt somebody.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember. You didn’t say you’d hurt somebody, you said it would hurt you. You said love would kill you. And yet, here you are, eight years and three serious love affairs later.”

“I was right. I should have followed my own advice.”

“Bullshit.”

Shane turned and looked at her.

“It’s bullshit, Shane. It isn’t love that fucks you up. It’s you who fucks up love. No offense, but you were already a little bit fucked up when love came along. Yes? No?”

Shane didn’t say anything.

“Here’s a little-known story from my own personal experience,” Carmen said. “I was once in love with somebody. It was serious. I really loved her, even though she was a little fucked up around the edges. I’m not being critical; she had been dealt some bad hands by life, she’d had some tough times. In spite of all the bad shit that had happened to her, she was fundamentally a good person. A very good person. She had a good heart. Make that a great heart. Just a little damaged. There were people who warned me, or tried to warn me. They said, hey, this person has some issues, you need to be careful. Now, I already knew all about the issues, and I ignored the warnings, well-intentioned as they were. People didn’t want me to get hurt. That’s understandable enough, don’t you think? But the thing about having issues, is, we all have them. It isn’t that one person is fucked up; it’s that we’re all fucked up, some just a little, some a lot, and it depends on how bad, and how we handle it. You with me so far? So anyway, there was this person I was in love with. Totally, completely, one hundred percent. No hesitations, no reservations. And this person was in love with me, too. In fact, she wanted me to marry her, and I said yes. Was that a mistake, considering this woman’s history, which, quite frankly, wasn’t that good, relationship-wise. No, it wasn’t a mistake. You know why? Because of all those western movies I used to watch when I was a kid. You know, movies like _Shane_ , and _High Noon_ , and all those Bull Conner movies Jenny and I used to watch. They always had a subtext, about courage and bravery. Pretty often, the hero knows he’s likely to get killed if he goes out there in the street to meet the bad guy. He’s outnumbered, maybe. Maybe he’s hurt, can’t shoot as fast as he needs to. Maybe it’s just that he has to protect somebody, it’s usually the woman he’s in love with, but he knows he’s probably got to die to save her. So yeah, it’s Hollywood and so he lives and the bad guy dies, but the good guy doesn’t know that when he buckles on his gun belt and walks out into the street. And yes, he’s scared to death. He’s afraid, but there’s this macho guy code. He can’t show fear. He’s got to be stoic. That’s the Code of the West. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And I’m watching all these movies, and I’m thinking, hey, this is bullshit. Not because it’s wrong for Alan Ladd or Gary Copper to be this brave, stone-faced stoic. It’s bullshit because the women in these movies are different. They aren’t expected to be brave and heroic and courageous, like the men. But you know what? In real life, they were every bit as brave and heroic. They faced the same dangers all the men did, they were on the wagon trains, they got scalped and massacred by Indians. And in real life, they got raped and abused and beat up by the men, probably even worse back then than now. Society has always mis-interpreted those movies. They aren’t about how to be a man. They’re about how to be brave. They just always used men as the role models, typical sexist, silly macho Hollywood. Leave it to them to get it only half right.

“What I learned was, women have to learn to be brave and courageous, too. Even if they are afraid, maybe even deathly afraid, they can’t show it, they can’t let fear get the better of them. Women have to be brave and courageous and stoic, even in the face of overwhelming odds against them. If they weren’t brave and courageous and stoic they’d never have a single baby. You feel like shit for six or seven months, then you scream for 24 hours. Who needs that shit? But we’d have become extinct a hundred thousand years ago without courage. And so, Shane, when this woman asked me to marry her, I was afraid. I had doubts. I know all the problems and the likelihood of humiliation and failure. I knew there would be a lot of pain. I knew I might get hurt, maybe really, really bad. But I knew from those movies what I had to do. I had to put on my big boy britches and my stoic cowboy face. I had to buckle on my gun belt and go out into the street and face down whatever was going to happen, good or bad. And nobody was ever supposed to know how scared I was. Anyway, it was a tent up in Whistler, not a street, but same difference. You walk toward the person who’s gonna hurt you. Having dad on your arm is just false conciliation.”

“When I was getting dressed, putting on my wedding dress -- oh, Shane, it was gorgeous. You should have seen it -- anyway, I was putting it on, and my mom was in the room, and my hands were shaking. I was that afraid. And my mom just laughed. She said, ‘Carmencito, you’re so nervous, your hands are shaking.’ But I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t just wedding jitters. I couldn’t tell her it was fear.”

“You see, Shane, I knew. I knew you weren’t going to be there, downstairs, waiting for me at the altar. I knew I was going to go walk out into the dusty street in front of the saloon and get shot down. It’s just what you have to do – you walk toward the gun, not away from it. I just couldn’t let anybody see it, least of all my mom, who had come all the way to Whistler to see her beloved baby girl get married. And this is something I have never told anyone, ever. Not Jenny, not Alice, not Lauren, not my sisters. I knew when I rode the elevator downstairs and walked across the lobby with my mom, everyone looking at us, me in my gorgeous wedding dress, people clapping and smiling, and we walked down the corridor to the door and out to the tent to the entrance of the tent, I already knew you weren’t going to be there, and I was going to get hurt. You know how I knew, Shane? Because you’re a coward, that’s how. Whenever you had a major problem in your life, you ran away. Whenever some poor girl or woman was attracted to you, you ran like a fucking bandit. You were afraid. You’re afraid of love. You’re afraid of committing yourself to someone. You’re so fucking afraid you’ll be hurt, like I was at Whistler. Basically, Shane, you’re a coward. And I always knew that. It’s why it took me a week just to say yes to a question that should have taken maybe half a second.

"Have you ever in your whole life ever fought for something? Had a cause? Defended somebody? Went down swinging? Or have you always just run away? Have you never felt strongly enough about anything or anybody? Yes, you're a very loyal person ... until things get tough. Until things get hard. You let Jenny push you around and manipulate you, that was a kind of running away, and she even betrayed you, and still you didn't get mad. You know why I knew you didn't kill her? Because you’re a coward. You know that saying, 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going while Shane McCutcheon runs away.' But Shane, pardon me for putting it this way, but you need to grow a set of balls.”

“And here’s the final piece of something I need to tell you, that I’ve never, ever said to any other human being on earth, and never will. The reason why you and I will never, ever get back together, no matter how we truly feel about each other, is because you’re a coward. And I can’t love someone who I know will run away when I need her most. I might love that person with all my heart and soul, and I might want to fuck that person until the cows come home. But I cannot respect that person. I cannot count on that person. I know that person won’t be there when I need her. I cannot have a romantic, sexual, loving relationship with that person. Not ever. Once was enough.”

Shane sat through all of this with her head in her hands, her face not visible. Carmen couldn’t tell if she was crying or not.

“I love you, Shane. I always will, until the day I die. But I cannot have a lover’s relationship with you. I know it now, and I knew it back then. But I had to hide my fear and ride down the elevator in my wedding dress, and stand there at the back of the aisle, and when Alice came up to me, she didn’t have to say anything. I had to walk out into the street and meet my fate. That’s what the other Shane did, and Gary Cooper and Bull Connor, and John Wayne and Kevin Costner and all those other guys. Pretty ironic, huh? I fell in love with the wrong Shane, not the brave one but the cowardly one. And don’t tell me that was just Hollywood and they were just actors, because there’s all those guys who went away to the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and World War One and World War Two, and who settled the west and rode in wagon trains and a thousand other real-life examples. Shane, I’m sorry you didn’t watch much TV when you were a kid because your home life was so fucked up, and you didn’t go to the movies like other kids, and that you missed some important stuff. What you missed was how to be an adult. How to be brave. How to swallow your fear and walk out into the street at high noon or 7 o’clock at night in a tent up in Canada. Not only couldn’t you marry me, you couldn’t even tell me face-to-face. You made Alice do it. That’s what I can never forgive.”

Carmen stood up. “I’m sorry, Shane. I’ve been sorry every day and every hour and every minute since the night I got shot down in the street, like I knew I would. The only difference is, there were no bullets and I didn’t die. The wound wasn’t fatal and I just cried a lot instead. I’m going inside now. Clean up your face, grab yourself a taco from a taco truck, and pull yourself together. We have work to do.”


	24. Confessional

Carmen entered the conference room; Lauren was the only one there, reviewing her notes, sipping a soda, and eating a Nutter-Butter from the vending machine down the hall. “Cookie?” she said, pushing the pack toward Carmen, who sat down beside her.

“You smooth talker, you,” Carmen said, taking the last one.

“So, how is she?” Lauren asked quietly.

“Not good,” Carmen said.

“Oh?”

“We, uh, had words. Or rather, I had words.”

“I see,” Lauren said. “Did we use our indoor voice? Did we use our grown-up words?”

“I kinda ripped her a new one.”

Lauren sucked in the last of her soda, the straw making that funny rattling sound when the cup is finally empty. She waited. “You’re gonna make me pull it out of you, aren’t you? Remember, I’m carrying a loaded weapon.”

“Sorry,” Carmen said. She sighed. “I kind of … lost it. Not loud and angry, or anything. But I told her … .” Another hesitation.

“Yes?”

“I told her she was a coward. That she ran away from problems. That she ran away like a coward that night up in Whistler. That she let Jenny push her around.”

“I’m guessing that was a long time building up.”

“Only four years, more or less.”

“Do I need to send out a search party for her? EMTs? A coroner’s unit? Were you the last person to see her alive? My guess is that was the big ‘Go fuck yourself, Shane’ speech you had festering inside you all these years.”

“You must be psychic.”

“Yeah,” Lauren said. “Nobody could see that one coming. You feel better now?”

“You know I don’t. Where are you going?”

“Get another pack of Nutter Butters out of the machine. You’re in a major six-cookie funk.” Lauren came back a minute later with another pack of Nutter Butters and tossed them on the table as she sat down. “Go ahead. Sugar high, it’s the only cure. I’ve got a naloxone pen, if you OD.”

“I don’t need a cookie, I need a drink,” Carmen said, tearing the cookie wrapper open and biting a Nutter Butter in half.

Marybeth entered the conference room, followed by the Calloway wagon train. When they were all settled, Marybeth looked around.

“Where’s Shane?”

“She’ll be along soon,” Carmen said.

Marybeth looked doubtful, but decided not to pursue it. “Recording and videotaping equipment going back on.” She pushed some buttons. “Lt. Marybeth Duffy, continuing the interrogation of Niki Stevens, following our lunch break. When we stopped, Detective Hancock was reading from a deposition from Mollie Kroll, who claimed that when she returned Shane’s jacket to Jenny, Jenny had lied by saying Shane and Niki were shacked up and quote fucking unquote at the Chateau Marmot. But Shane says she was just next door at Bette and Tina’s house, and later went out to an all-night restaurant. Niki, you confirmed you ran into Shane there, and that Jenny was lying when she said you and Shane were at the Chateau Marmot.”

“That’s right. Shane and I never went there. I only ran into her at the coffee shop.”

“You said you got a text message from Jenny while you were there.”

“Yes. Jenny said she wanted me to come over. I asked Shane if Jenny was sincere. Shane said she was. So I went over to Jenny’s house and uh, you know. We spent the night.”

“Having sex.”

“Yes.”

“And then in the morning she called you a brat and kicked you out.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, I could hardly hear you,” Marybeth said.

“Yes,” Niki said more firmly.

The door opened and Shane walked in and sat down. She looked like shit. Carmen didn’t look up.

“Shane, are you okay?” Marybeth asked.

Shane nodded. “I’m okay. Just ... you know. Please, go on.”

Marybeth turned back to Niki. “I want to ask you about Tina Kinnard. She was the producer of _Lez Girls_ , correct?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Did you ever have sex with her?”

“No! No way!”

“Just asking. So you had a strictly professional relationship with her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever have sex with Helena Peabody, the previous head of the studio, Shaolin Productions?”

“No, of course not. She wasn’t even there when I started on _Lez Girls_.”

“Did you ever have sex with Aaron Kornbluth, who took over when Helena resigned?”

“No! You’re kidding, right? Aaron? Ewww.”

“We’re talking about Hollywood,” Marybeth said drily. “You may have heard rumors about studio executives behaving badly with women.”

Everyone smiled or laughed, even Niki.

“What about William Halsey? He wasn’t a studio executive, but he financed _Lez Girls_ , correct?”

Niki took this one better. “No,” she said, smiling. “I didn’t fuck William Halsey. Among other things, he was Jenny’s patron. She ran into him down in Mexico on a vacation.”

“To your knowledge, did Jenny have sex with him?”

“You’re kidding again, right? Jenny didn’t do guys. And William would be at the bottom of the list of guys Jenny wouldn’t sleep with, right below Aaron.”

Shane was relieved; it appeared Niki had no knowledge about what had happened at the marriage of William Halsey’s daughter. Jenny had prevailed on William’s wife to hire Shane as the hairdresser for the bride, the bride’s mother (William’s wife), and the maid of honor, who was the bride’s sister. Shane had had sex with all three of them, albeit separately, on the wedding day. A new personal best, by any standard. Jenny never learned about it, and Shane had never told Alice, so it never made The Chart.

“Just crossing my T’s and dotting my i’s,” Marybeth said. “So you got the part in _Lez Girls_ without having to have sex with anyone, is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Niki said.

“And how did you get along with Tina? Any problems during the shooting?”

“Problems? No, it was the most peaceful, problem-free movie shoot I’ve ever been on,” Niki said, and again everyone laughed.

“Okay, problems,” she said. “The head of the studio, Helena Peabody, goes to jail for stealing money from somebody she owed a $50,000 gambling debt to. Then we get Aaron Kornbluth, the new studio head. The first director, Kate Arden, gets fired. Jenny takes over as director. My management people want me to pretend to be straight. Then one night we all go mud wrestling and get arrested. Adele plots against Jenny and gets her kicked off the lot and takes over as director because of a sex tape Jenny made and I happened to be in. And then Aaron and his people wanted to totally change the ending of the movie, so it wasn’t a lezzie dyke-flick any more, and because of that the producer and writer/one-third ex-director go ballistic. So that’s three directors, two studio heads, one sex tape, two or three media scandals, and then the studio completely sells out and changes the end of the movie, which is guaranteed to piss off every LGBT, M, R, Z, Q and Y person in California. No, all in all, I’d say it was a pretty average shoot.”

Everyone laughed again.

“But you were angry at Jenny, after she kicked you out of bed, everything else aside, that was your primary reason.”

“Yes.”

“And was that when you decided to get revenge?”

“Yes.”

“How did that come about?”

“Like I said. I was angry and talking to some of my friends. Somebody said, get the negatives and destroy them. Your career will be saved. Jenny won’t have her movie.”

“You said you had a friend help you, he came up with the details about shipping the negatives back and forth from the lab.”

“Yes.”

“And as part of that interception of the negatives you faked Tina’s name on the transmittal e-mail, and later e-mailed a ransom note on Tina’s laptop traceable back to her. And you weren’t even mad at Tina, right? Just Jenny? You framed a woman who never did you any harm with stealing four and a half million dollars’ worth of movie she produced in good faith. That’s four-plus million bucks that belonged to William Halsey and to Shaolin Productions.”

Ah, Lauren and Carmen both thought. Here’s the Marybeth we know and love, taking off the kid gloves and sticking the knife in and twisting it, working off all that anger for an investigation that had stuck in her craw for two years. Calloway and his team never batted an eyelash.

“Well … yes,” Niki said quietly. “I didn’t think anyone would believe it was Tina. And I was right, nobody did, not after the first day. Anyway, I knew the studio was going to get the negatives back. They weren’t going to be out the four million dollars, or however much it was.”

“You yourself went into Jenny’s house and hid the negatives in her attic, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And if anyone believed the part about Tina’s role, they’d just think Jenny and Tina acted together to steal them. And if they didn’t, they’d think Jenny was the one who not only stole the negatives but was mean and evil enough to frame Tina, her friend and next door neighbor, for it.”

“Yes. But I thought that wouldn’t happen. I didn’t think anybody would believe Tina was in on it. Just Jenny. And the negatives were in Jenny’s house, not Tina’s.”

“You said the studio would eventually get the negatives back. What did you mean by that?”

Niki looked down at her hands and didn’t want to answer.

“Niki,” Calloway gently prodded.

“I was going to get somebody to make a phone call to the police. Anonymous. They tell the police the stolen negatives were in Jenny’s attic. Then the police would go there and find them, and arrest Jenny.”

“They might have arrested me, too,” Shane said. They could hear the anger in her voice.

Niki looked at her. “I … I hadn’t thought about that. I’m sorry. But I never intended for it to come back on you. Please believe me. I didn’t. It was just about Jenny.”

Shane said nothing, just looked away.

“Tell us how you hid the negatives in Jenny’s house,” Marybeth said.

“Well, I had them at my house, and I already knew where I wanted to hide them, in Jenny’s attic--”

“How did you know about the attic?”

“Uh. Well. See, Jenny and me, we, uh. You know. In the closet. And this one time, Jenny pulls down the attic steps and she … uh. She told me to tie her up to them, you know? Not real tight or anything, but … Jenny liked to be tied up sometimes. Sometimes she liked … you know … doing it … standing up. And we’d play games, pretend stuff. So I tied her wrists above her head to the ladder with a scarf, not tight, and uh… is that enough? Do you need to know more?”

Lauren, Carmen and Shane all kept their eyes on the tabletop in front of them, nobody looking at anybody. Lauren wondered about Jenny having sex with Carmen back in the day, and with Shane more recently in the month before her death. Did Carmen or Shane ever tie Jenny to that ladder, too? Carmen and Shane were both experienced lesbians, but Jenny had pretty clearly learned about BDSM well before her relationship with Shane. Was Carmen Jenny’s original bondage teacher, or was it someone else?

Carmen studied the Nutter Butter wrapper she played with in her hands. Her very first lesbian experience had been vertical, up against the door of her bedroom, with Lucia Torres. And then there had been vertical sex in the alley behind the church. And then, much later, with Jenny and then Shane. Carmen had been the first person to lightly tie Jenny to the attic stairs, but apparently not the last …

Shane studied the label on the bottle of water in front of her. She’d been doing vertical sex for her entire adult life, in alleys behind bars, in those bars’ bathrooms, in changing rooms, a couple of closets, damn near any place that didn’t have a bed and a few that did, actually. And then, much later, with Carmen and then Jenny. She assumed she had been the last person to lightly tie Jenny to the attic stairs, but apparently not …

“I think that’ll be enough,” Marybeth said. “You already knew there was a pull-down stairs in her closet, and how it worked and where it led to. Where you ever upstairs in the attic?”

“No, not then. The only time was when I went up there to hide the negatives. Jenny said she hardly ever went up there, just whenever she needed to get some luggage or something she stored up there. She said Shane almost never went up there, either.”

“Okay, you had the negatives, and an idea where to hide them. What happened next?”

“Well, I had to figure out when nobody would be home. And I knew I didn’t want to drive over there and just park right in front of their house and then go inside. I knew they kept a key in one of those fake rock things on the back patio. I’d just go in the back door using that key.”

Carmen closed her eyes. That key, that fucking fake rock. She’s the one who had bought it, back in the day.

“Okay, please continue,” Marybeth said.

“I drove over there a couple days later, after I had the negatives. It was after dark, maybe nine o’clock. I drove around the block a couple times, to see if Jenny or Shane was home. I could usually tell by what cars were there, and what lights were on in the house. So I was driving around the block behind their house, I guess it was 15th Street, and there was this house with this white panel truck in the driveway, and the garage door was open. The garage was empty, and there was this guy coming out. I drove around the block, and the garage door was shut and the truck was gone.”

Carmen, Shane, Lauren and Marybeth all had the same sphincter-tightening reaction: Had Niki seen the Creep? Had she seen Jenny’s killer?

Marybeth feigned disinterest. “And then?”

“I figured the house was vacant, and the painter or carpenter had left. I realized the house backed up against Jenny and Shane’s house. I parked on 15th and sat there in the dark for a while. There was no lights on in the houses next door, only one or two houses on the other sides of the street. It was a real quiet street, no car traffic, nobody out walking a dog, or anything. So I got out of my car and walked to the house, and nobody saw me, so I kept going. I walked around behind the house to the back yard.”

“Then what happened?” Marybeth asked.

“I was standing at the fence, looking at the back of Jenny’s house. Then a cat came up and scared the shit out of me. But it ignored me, and went back between the back of the garage and the fence, and next thing I know is it’s walking through Jenny’s backyard and out toward the other street. And I think, how did it do that? And I go back behind the garage in that narrow area between the garage and the fence, and you know what? There’s a broken section of the fence, and if you push on it it kind of opens, sort of like a gate. It’s already wide enough for a cat to get through, easy. So I’m back there and I push on it, and it moves a little, and I squeeze through, and I’m in Jenny’s back yard. It’s overgrown and there’s this big shrub there, but I’m behind it, between it and the fence.”

“You had the movie negatives with you?”

“No, I left them in the trunk of my car. But then I went back to get them, and I came back behind the garage, I went through the gap into Jenny’s backyard. Then I went into her house.”

“How did you do that?”

“I knew there was a key on the porch, in a fake rock. Jenny once said everybody used it. I already had used it myself a couple times. I unlocked the back door and went in.”

“And then what did you do?” Marybeth asked, knowing the answer.

“I went into the bedroom and the closet, and put the negatives up in the attic.”

“You already knew about the pull-down steps, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Then what?”

“Then I left.”

“You put the steps back up first, correct?”

“Yes, yes, that’s right. I put the steps back up and left.”

“Were you wearing gloves of any kind?”

“Yes. I...I had a pair of those latex gloves. I have a chef who cooks for us from time time, and we have a box of gloves he uses. I took a pair of them with me. I think you’re asking about finger prints. I was always careful about not leaving any on the film canisters.”

“Would it be accurate to say you had thought about all this beforehand?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“You had a plan.” It was barely a question at all.

“Yes.”

“And what was your intention? What did you expect to happen?”

“I don’t know. A couple things. One is that nobody would find them for a long time and the studio would forget about the movie, and it would just die. Another was that somebody would find them and the police would arrest Jenny for stealing them. That would have been okay, too.”

“So what exactly was your motive in stealing them? Can you say?”

“Well...to fuck Jenny, I guess. Get back at her. I was really pissed.”

“What about the studio? Or Adele?”

“I don’t care about them, one way or the other. I mean, I had nothing against them, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did you kill Jenny Schecter?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No. I thought...what’s her name. Alice.”

“No, she didn’t do it,” Marybeth said. Carmen and Shane both made note of the fact that it was the first time Marybeth had said that. Whether she actually meant it was something else entirely.

“Did you witness her being killed? Did you see it?”

“No. Like I said, I was walking around the neighborhood, and when I came back there were police cars and ambulances and stuff.”

“When you went into Jenny and Shane’s house with the negatives to put them in the attic, were you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“At Jenny’s house? No, not that I know of.”

“Did you drive? Where did you park?”

“On 15th Street, the street behind her house.”

“Did you see anyone there, or did anyone see you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“On the night of Jenny’s murder, you were found hiding in the bushes. How did you get there?”

“I drove.”

“Where did you park?”

“Two blocks away. There was no parking spots open on 15th Street, and I didn’t want to park on their street.”

“Did anyone see you, and did you see anyone?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“What route did you take getting into the backyard?”

“I went alongside the house on 15th Street to the backyard, then through the gap in the fence behind the garage, same as before.”

“What did you see?”

“Not much. There were a few women on the back porch of Tina’s house.”

“What were they doing?”

“Just sitting, talking. They were quiet, I couldn’t her them. There was a little music playing. Bette came out of the house and joined them. She had a drink in her hand. I guess everybody else had a drink, too.”

“Did you see Jenny?”

“No, not that I could see. But they were sitting in shadows, under the garden thing. What do you call it?”

“The pergola?”

“Yes, I guess. It had plants growing up the outside of it. Arbor, that’s the word I was thinking of. They were all sitting in this arbor thing. Talking and having wine or whatever.”

“Were they loud? Making noise? Any dramatics?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“You saw Bette and you didn’t see Jenny. Did you see Shane or Alice?”

“Not that I know of. I assume they were there, but like I said, it was dark and they were in shadow under the arbor.”

“Okay. And you saw no one else around the neighborhood or at anybody else’s house?”

“No.”

“Okay. Now, you went back and forth around the house on 15th Street several times, the house behind Shane and Jenny’s, is that right?”

“Yes. I told you that.”

“I know. I’m just going over it to be clear. Now, suppose I told you that there was somebody in that house. What would you say?”

Nikki looked perplexed. “I don’t know. I though it was vacant. Jenny once said the people who lived there were out of the country or something.”

“But you saw a white panel truck there, and then it left, you said. When you drove back around the block it was gone.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess. I didn’t think it was the owners or anything. Was that who was in the house? I had no idea.”

“You never saw the person driving the truck, and you never saw anyone in the house.”

“No. I’d have told you. I mean, why wouldn’t ? No, I didn’t see anybody. Was there really somebody there?”

“We think it’s possible. I want to ask you about the blackmail now. You paid almost fifty thousand dollars, then stopped paying, which looks like it led directly to Jenny’s murder two days later, and you never told the police about any of it. And then six or eight months later, Max gets murdered in a faked hit-and-run out in Bakersfield.” Niki said nothing. There was silence in the room for a full minute (Carmen tracked it on the clock on the wall).

“Niki, could I have a word with the lieutenant and her people, please? Uh, Bobbi, could you and Elliott step out, too? Thanks,” Calloway said. Sullen, Niki left the conference room, trailed by The Bitch and the Briefcase Carrier, who closed the door behind them. Calloway waited until they were down the hall and couldn’t see in the window in the door. Without being asked, Marybeth turned off the video and audio recorders.

“She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?” Calloway sighed.

“Sure is,” Marybeth said.

“So, Marybeth, how’ve you been? Charlie okay?” Charlie was Marybeth’s husband. Lauren had met him exactly once, for less than two minutes.

“He’s good, Cal. You know, still teaching physics to college freshmen and starting to think about retirement someday. How’s Jo and the kids?”

“They’re good. I’ll tell Jo you said hi.”

“Do that. Last I heard, Cal Junior was a year or two away from finishing medical school, but I don’t think he’d picked a specialty.”

Cal grinned. “He’s in a small group practice. You’ll laugh your ass off when I tell you what his specialty is.”

“Good-looking kid like him? Let me guess. Gynecology?”

Calloway laughed. “Good try, but a little off. Proctology.”

“Good god, no!”

“Yep. And of course now we have a family joke that he entered the family business, just like mine. The Calloway family specializes in making assholes feel better.”

Everyone in the room laughed.

Calloway looked at Marybeth. “So. What kind of trouble’s my girl in?”

Marybeth sighed. “End of the day, probably nothing. You and I both know I could cobble together some half-assed minor chickenshit, but my heart wouldn’t be in it. But I’ll tell you this much, Cal. I have spent the past two years really, really pissed at Alice Pieszecki for fucking up my homicide investigation. I’m telling you now for the record I’m equally pissed at Niki. To my mind she’s now fifty percent responsible for putting my investigation into the shit can. If she had come forward right away and told us about the blackmail, we’d have never let Pieszecki’s false confession sit there and fester. We’d have been all over it, and we may even have turned up the Creep stalker two years ago, instead of last week. And for all I know that might have prevented Max’s homicide.”

Calloway nodded sympathetically. “I don’t blame you. And I can tell, you guys really like the blackmailer for this. Maybe for both.”

“We do, Cal. We’ve got a couple other people we want to look at, but there’s no doubt the blackmailer and Creep are the top of our list, and I’m convinced they are the same guy.”

“Let me ask you this. How come you and Lauren are even handling it? What I heard was, you took the promotion to head Missing Persons partly because you blew a case and walked away from the homicide squad all pissed at yourself. This was that case, right?”

“I guess that’s about as true as most scuttlebutt, Cal.”

“They ever give you shit upstairs?”

“You kidding? They were happy as clams we had a confession so fast, and even happier it was somebody who had no connection to Niki and the studio. Upstairs they were patting each other on the back and calling the janitor to come mop up their flop sweat. When I put in for the transfer, they gave me Missing Persons thinking it was a reward for good work. I took it as penance for a job I let get away too easy.”

“How’d you re-open it?”

“It fell into my lap. Shane and Carmen, there, came to me and wanted it re-opened. At first I couldn’t do it, but I let Lauren start playing with it off the books. Mainly because the goddam thing was still stuck in my craw. Before you know it, Charlie’s Angels here started popping up viable leads, and then the second homicide out in Bakersfield. So I sweet-talked Homicide into letting us continue to run with it, since we were so far down the road already. And you know Jack. I could always talk him into anything. How’d you get hooked up with Niki?”

“Jerry Friedlander’s shop handled her, back when she sued that skin magazine over the faked blowjob photo, and then her first coke re-hab. Then when Jerry dropped dead from that stroke he had in superior court, he only had two people in his practice who had criminal as well as drug and alcohol rehab experience, but they were busy working something with one of the Kardashians. So they politely told Niki she should look around for other representation, and I was one of the names they gave her. Of course, she’s got all the movie contract and endorsement stuff, and Mike Trainor’s still got that, the business end of her, but he doesn’t handle the criminal and drug-and-alcohol stuff. So anyway, that was just before Schecter was murdered, and Niki didn’t have a criminal lawyer.”

“You mean when we interrogated her she was up there without a net?”

“Yep. Bare-ass naked, legally speaking. That’s one reason she never asked for a lawyer.”

“We Mirandized her and asked if she wanted to call one, but she said no. I thought she was crazy, but of course I wasn’t going to push it. And then the dumb bitch confesses to stealing the negatives and planting them in Jenny and Shane’s house, and I started worrying about her rights and self-incrimination, even though we’d bent over backwards. And then the pussies at the studio shit their panties and declined to press charges, because they wanted to keep their movie and their diva as far out of the limelight as they could. And then a couple hours later Pieszecki confesses, and I just lost it, went home and kicked the dog and made Charlie miserable for a week.”

“Yeah, I can see that, especially knowing you. You said earlier that this Pieszecki woman was covering for somebody. Who?”

Shane quietly raised her hand. “That would be me.”

Calloway looked at her calmly. “Did you kill Jenny?”

“No.”

“Glad to hear it. But why did Pieszecki think so?”

“Because I had motive. I was really pissed at Jenny, more pissed than I think I’ve ever been at anyone in my whole life.”

“My understanding is you and Niki had a sexual relationship, is that correct.”

“Why’s that important?” Shane asked.

“Only because Niki’s my client, and, how can I put this politely? She has difficulties with truth and factual matters. So I like to double check things she’s told us, just to make sure. She says you and she had a thing going on, and Jenny kicked you out of the house.”

“That’s right,” Shane said quietly.

“This was while you also had a relationship with Jenny?”

“No. But that’s the thing. Jenny and Niki had broken up a few days earlier, and from my point of view Niki was, uh…”

“Fair game?”

“Well, uh, yeah. I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes. Fair game.”

“Jenny kicked you out of the house, and she kicked Niki out, is that right? Was that her pattern with girlfriends and lovers?”

“No, not at all.”

“I hate to ask this next question, but as far as you know was anybody else beside you and Jenny having sex with my client? Anybody from your circle of friends, I mean.”

“No.”

“Not Alice?”

“Good god, no,” Shane said, and Carmen laughed. Marybeth looked away, and Lauren smiled.

“Sorry for asking, but why is that funny? I’m only asking for my education.”

Carmen glanced at Shane, but knew she had to take it. “It’s only funny if you knew Alice. But the main thing is that Alice was in the middle of a pretty intense break-up with someone she’d been serious about for a year or more. And, uh, how can I put this? Niki wasn’t Alice’s type.”

“Because?”

“Let’s just say, Alice is fairly high maintenance herself, and Niki is a couple of orders of magnitude higher. Jenny was, too. Let’s just say, not Alice’s type.”

“Okay. How about Niki and anybody from the studio? What about Adele, the other blackmailer? Any of the other actresses or studio people?”

“I wasn’t around, but I never heard anything,” Carmen said.

“Nothing as far as I know of,” Shane said. “And definitely not Adele.”

“Again, may I ask why not?”

Shane searched for words. “Nothing I can put my finger on. Just oil and water, I guess. There was some talk about Niki and her posse and the people she hung out with, but who she might have been fucking – uh, sorry. Who she might have had relationships with I don’t know. I never hung around with them.”

“No gossip, no talk around the studio?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t listen to a lot of gossip. People talk, but I don’t pay attention and sometimes I just walk away.”

“If that’s true, you’re the only person in all of Southern California who doesn’t pay attention to gossip, but I guess there had to be someone, and it turns out to be you. That’s good, it restores my faith in humanity.” Calloway turned his attention to Carmen. “Miss Morales, you’ve been pretty quiet. Do you have any thoughts on everything we’ve discussed that might be useful?”

“Everything seems to be covered pretty well, I’d say.”

“My understanding is you were not in Los Angeles when the movie was being made and when Miss Schecter was murdered.”

“That’s right. I had moved to San Francisco and I work for a cruise line. I was halfway to Hawaii when Jenny was killed.”

“And my client says you and she never met, and didn’t know each other then or even now, is that correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“My understanding is you also had a sexual relationship with Miss Schecter at one time, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“How long did that relationship last?”

“Maybe six months.”

“Was your breakup amicable? No dramatics? No kicking anybody out?”

“It was very amicable, yes, as you said. No dramatics. And we remained good friends, right up to the end. We’d talk on the phone, exchange gossip, send Christmas and birthday presents, visit one another. She came on cruises on my cruise line when I was aboard. I even sent her a video tape saying goodbye to Bette and Tina that Jenny made. They were all watching that video when Jenny was murdered.”

Calloway pondered his next question. Carmen wondered if he was going to go any deeper into any of her relationships and history, sexual or otherwise. She wasn’t going to let him go very far.

“All right, thank you, Miss Morales,” he finally said. “Marybeth, I thinks that’s all I have.”

Calloway stood up, and Marybeth did, too, meeting him at the conference room door to see him out. They spoke for a second at the doorway.

“I feel like I just walked in on my parents having sex,” Lauren whispered to Shane and Carmen.

“Icky,” Carmen agreed.

“Fucking-A,” Shane said.

Marybeth came back in and sat down. She looked at the three blank faces staring at her. “What?” she said, but knew what was what.

“That was some show you two put on for us,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, well, a day in the life of a police lieutenant. Consider it a teachable moment. That was Cal. Most of it was for Niki’s benefit. They’re going down in the elevator now, and he’s telling her how close she came to being arrested and having the book thrown at her, were it not for his terrific lawyerly skills and contacts. Meanwhile Bobbi has already reamed Niki two new assholes for withholding evidence, aiding and abetting, obstruction, driving under the influence of stupid, and whatever else she can cough up that her boss, Calloway, can say he got her off the hook for. And Elliott gets to watch and learn. Like you guys.”

“Is that why you let us stay?”

“Yes. And because Cal wanted you to stay, too.”

“Why’s that? Carmen asked.

“He wanted to hear you and Shane talk. He wanted to get to know you.”

“Why?”

“He was being thorough, it’s one of the many things he’s good at. And you never know. In Hollywood, people’s paths cross and re-cross all the time. Maybe someday in the future one of you might become his client. Or a witness in a case or something.”

“Or a victim,” Shane said quietly. Nobody laughed.

“That reminds me, I want to ask three questions,” Carmen said.

“Go,” Marybeth said.

“Number one. Why was Max killed? Number two. Jenny was killed two years ago, and Max roughly half a year later. The killer is out there now. What’s he doing? Does he know we’re after him? Is he watching us?”

“Number three. Are any of us also in danger?”


	25. Shark

Marybeth drummed her fingers on her desk, her face frowning as she looked at Carmen. She wasn’t frowning _at_ Carmen; she was frowning at what Carmen had just asked. Carmen, for her part, wondered if Marybeth was ever going to come up with an answer, but she finally did. It was a punt. “Lauren, what do you think?”

Carmen had asked if they were in danger. She meant others of the Friends who had been at the party when Jenny was murdered. But she may have also meant Lauren and herself, too. They were, after all, investigating two murders. Jenny and Max were already dead.

Lauren was frowning, too. “I don’t like it that we still don’t know why they were murdered. We have a theory with Jenny, having to do with the blackmail, but we aren’t even sure if that was premeditated, or spontaneous. It seems clearer that Max’s murder was premeditated, but we don’t know why. We aren’t even sure the two are linked. We suspect it, but we don’t _know_ it. I don’t think we can know if anyone else is in danger, absent a good reason why Jenny and Max were killed. Short answer? I don’t know. Longer answer? It’s always prudent to take some precautions.”

“Okay,” Marybeth said. “But who is it needs protection? Carmen, you asked the question, and you’ve obviously been thinking about it. I know you like to think outside the box. What is it you’re thinking?”

“Okay, first, I don’t think Lauren is at risk, because she’s a police detective going about an investigation, her job. And going after a cop is a really bad idea and a major escalation. I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I don’t think I’m personally at risk, because I wasn’t at the party and I’m just basically tagging along as Lauren’s trusty sidekick and comic relief. My first concern is Niki, because she was a co-victim of the blackmail, if the killer was eliminating witnesses. It raises the question, though, why wasn’t she eliminated some time ago? It’s been what, two years now. My next fear is Shane--”

Shane’s head shot up and she looked at Carmen.

“--It’s less because she was Jenny’s lover at the end, but rather she was Jenny’s friend and confidante for many years, and she lived in the house where the movie negatives were hidden. But there’s the same problem with Shane as with Niki. It’s been two years, and if somebody was going after either of them, they’d have done it by now. So why not? Here’s some possibilities. First, the killer isn’t worried about them, has no reason or desire to kill them. This may be because the killer believes they don’t know anything that could hurt him, and maybe they don’t. That would be good for Shane and Niki, at least. Second possibility: He hasn’t gone after them because he couldn’t. He’s dead, or in jail, or has left the country. He’d try to get them if he could, but he can’t. That’s the one that worries me. Third possibility: Wherever he is, he’s unaware that we’ve restarted the investigation. After killing Max, he thinks he’s in the clear. Nothing happens, he relaxes, whatever the problem was, it’s problem solved. He took his hundred G’s blackmail cash and is living quietly below the radar in some beach village in Costa Rica. He doesn’t know we believe Alice didn’t do it, and we’re back on the case, cold as it may be. My fear is, what happens if and when he finds out? What happens when we get close? How close is close? Does he get worried all over again and think maybe he has to take out the people he ignored before. Namely Niki and Shane.”

Marybeth drummed her fingers again, thinking. “If he’s not aware we’ve reopened the case, it tells us something. It means he’s not in the immediate vicinity of the group. He’s no longer watching anything, he has no contact with anyone of them. It’s part physical distance, part communication. We’ve managed to avoid media attention so far. What worries me is blackmailers and extortionists are like sharks, when they find a good feeding ground, they come back to it from time to time. Your theory proposes he isn’t a shark, or isn’t one yet. I know it’s a huge cliché, but he hasn’t returned to the scene of the crime. What happens if he does?”

“He goes after Niki,” Lauren said quietly.

“Because?”

“She was his co-victim. Presumably she knows almost as much about the details as Jenny did. She made the drops. Maybe she saw something. She told us she didn’t, but how does he know that? And maybe she did see something but didn’t know or understand at the time what it was. You know, she’s cunning and wily and amoral, but she’s not a rocket scientist. Maybe she saw something but didn’t know it. Or hell, maybe he’s just going to take a precaution.”

“Why does he take her out?” Marybeth asked, playing devil’s advocate. “She’s got a ton of money. She’s the richest feeding grounds he’ll ever find other than maybe Helena again. Why not try to take another bite?”

“Well, he knows Niki is surrounded by a lot of lawyers. She was before, but not as many as now. Here’s a question. Does he believe Niki told the investigation or her lawyers about the blackmail?”

“That’s pretty interesting,” Lauren said. “On the one hand, we’d all say sure, that’s obvious we’d find out. But look, he’s got the same problem we do. Alice’s false confession shut down the investigation prematurely, within a single day of the murder itself. And afterward, there was no word in the media about blackmail or even much about Niki’s involvement. The studio hushed up the stolen negatives. All the news stories were about the murder and the confession next day by a friend pissed off about a stolen screenplay treatment. There’s a good chance he’d be thinking he was in the clear, because there was no mention and no follow-up.”

“How would he know that?” Carmen asked.

“Easy,” Marybeth said, and Lauren nodded, too. “We’d have sent people out to the observatory and the Hollywood Bowl, the two drop sites, looking for evidence, and just generally scoping the scene of the drops. But we never did. And all he’d have to do is keep those sites under observation for a few days. If no cops and no crime scene people show up, it must be because they didn’t know.”

“Okay, you’re right, that does seem easy. What about Shane?” Carmen asked.

“Hear, hear,” Shane muttered quietly. “What about me?”

“Shane was Jenny’s roommate, maybe he thinks Jenny confided in her,” Carmen said.

“Which she fucking well didn’t,” Shane said.

“Yes,” Carmen said quietly, “you know it and I know it, but he doesn’t know it.”

“All right,” Marybeth said. “Let’s get back to what we do know. How are you coming on all your interviews?”

“As far as the party goes, we’ve talked to everybody but Helena. She’s off somewhere on some isolated Greek island with her kids, no phones, no Internet, no e-mail. I’ve left word with her people to tell her to get in touch with us at the earliest opportunity. They say they are even going to send a messenger to the island she staying on, but there’s no guarantee when we’ll hear back. We’ve talked to Alice briefly, once, but we need to go back for a second round. Outside the group, we have to talk to Tom, Max’s husband, and the adoption people. That’s due diligence, and I don’t expect anything much to come from it. I owe a phone call to Sgt. Collins out in Bakersfield, to update him on our end and see if he’s got anything new, although if he did he’d have called me.”

Like everyone else, Carmen had turned her cellphone ringer off, leaving it on vibrate. It vibrated now, sitting on the table in front of her. Everyone could see and feel it humming. So much for not drawing attention and disrupting a meeting. Carmen glanced at the caller ID: Her mother.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s my mom.”

“To ahead and take it,” Marybeth said. “Always take calls from your mother and your children.”

Carmen tapped the face of her phone and held it to her ear. “Hey. Mom, I’m in the middle of a big meeting. Can I call you back? … Oh … okay … okay. Really? Okay. I will. Yes, mom. Yes, mom. Yes, they’re here with me right now. Yes, mom. Yes, mom. Mom, jeez. Yes, I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” She sighed and ended the call. “Sorry. That was Mercedes, Queen of the Barrio. Her royal highness bideth her subjects cometh before the Royal Presence for dinner at the castle tonight at six p.m., and she apologizes for the short notice. Shane, you have a Very Special Royal Invitation--”

“You’re shitting me,” Shane said, surprised. The last she knew, Mercedes wanted her dead and her head on a pike for jilting Mercedes’ beloved youngest child at the altar.

“I shitteth not,” Carmen said. “I’m as shocked as you are. She never told me she wanted to bury the hatchet with you, so I suppose it could be a clever trap to have you assassinated in the street in front of her house, while she watches from the balcony.”

“I can’t,” Shane said. “I already told you, Chase and I are doing a commercial for the Sugar Shacks tonight.”

“Yes, you did tell me. You are therefore pardoned. Go in peace, my child. Lauren, got dinner plans?”

“Apparently not. She knows I carry a gun, right?”

“Yes. She knows. Anyway, she has no plans to have you executed, unlike Shane, and you’ve had dinner at her house before.”

“I know. Yes, Count me in, if I can take home leftovers. I ate her leftovers for three days last time I came to your house.”

Shane said nothing, but inside her head she said to herself, Lauren had dinner at Carmen’s mom’s house before? And she’s going again? Marybeth was on the same page, and also said and showed nothing.

“I think that leftovers can be arranged,” Carmen said. She couldn’t possibly mention to any of these women that Mercedes was measuring Lauren for the role of future daughter-in-law. “Marybeth, she specifically asked me to invite you and your husband. She wants to make sure you’re the kind of police lieutenant she’s comfortable having her beloved baby daughter hang around with.”

“I see,” Marybeth said with a straight face. “In case I might be one of those evil, crooked cops you see in the movies and on TV.”

“Exactly. She needs to be assured you aren’t a female Dudley Smith or that bad guy from _Person of Interest_.”

“She watches that show?” Marybeth asked. “I bet she thinks you look a little like Shaw.”

“Yes, she does,” Carmen said, “but I don’t see it myself.”

“Unfortunately, George and I have dinner plans, so please give her my regrets.”

“I will.”

“Make sure I get a rain check, though. Lauren says she’s a fabulous cook.”

“She is. I’ll tell her.”

“All right, let’s wrap it up for the day. We have a ton of stuff from Niki to go over and follow up on. Lauren, I’m going to put a rush on getting a transcript of today’s discussion so we’ll both have something to work off of. Carmen, Shane, you guys want copies?”

“Yes, please,” Carmen said.

“I’ll work off of Carmen’s or Lauren’s,” Shane said.

“Usual house rules, the transcript can’t leave the building, wink wink,” Marybeth said.

“Absolutely, chief, wink wink,” Lauren said.

Marybeth looked at her watch. “Christ, where did the day go? Anybody got a question? No? All right, Angels, go home, and on your way out send Bosley in.”

* * *

“Oh, mom, no, I can’t. Please, I’m serious. No.”

“Are you sure?” Mercedes asked. “You hardly ate anything. Didn’t you like it?”

“Mom, I had two helpings, and you know I love love love your cooking. And yes, it was great, as always.”

“Lauren? Please eat some more. There’s plenty. And you look like you’ve lost a little weight.”

“Oh, I can’t, Mrs. Morales,” Lauren said. “And last time I ate here I gained two pounds, and I just gained another two in the last hour. But it was fabulous.”

Carmen looked at her sister, Patty, and they both rolled their eyes. Patty, her husband, and their two-year-old daughter had also come to the dinner, and with Abuela that made seven of them, or six and a third. Accordingly, Mercedes made enough food for twelve and two-thirds, as was her custom, and because it made her happy.

“What should I do with the leftovers?” Mercedes asked, as though it was a total mystery, a completely unexpected occurrence.

“Uh, mom, there’s Lauren and me, and Patty, and Shane wants some, and even Marybeth. So I don’t think getting rid of the food is going to be a significant problem.”

“Well, okay, I guess,” Mercedes said. “Don’t forget, there’s desert. I hope you saved room.”

“Oh, dear God,” Carmen whispered, and Lauren grinned. “Please don’t tell me you made flan. We had that two night ago.”

“Flan? No, of course not,” Mercedes said. “It’s my tres leches cake with strawberries.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Lauren murmured, and everyone laughed.

“We can wait a little while, and let our dinner settle,” Mercedes said. “Why don’t you go sit on the porch and watch the sunset, and I’ll call you when the coffee’s ready.”

“Okay, but I’ll help you clear the table and clean up,” Carmen said.

“Me, too,” Lauren said.

“No, you guys, go sit on the porch,” Patty said. “I’ll help mom. Go, go!”

* * *

“I think I’m gonna explode,” Lauren said, sitting in a rocker on the Morales homestead front porch.

“Me, too.”

“Assault with a deadly enchilada. Homicide by chimichanga.”

“Yeah, but if you tried to put her on trial the jury would post her bail.”

“I know. So she gets a pass,” Lauren said. They were quiet for a moment. “I can hear you thinking, and it’s not your stomach digesting. The noise is coming from between your ears.”

“I’ve been thinking about why Jenny never hired that detective she told Niki about, when Niki talked her out of it.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”

“Because she lied. Jenny liked to do that. And she’s stubborn. She doesn’t – didn’t – abandon ideas easily. Maybe she did hire that private eye after all, but told Niki she wouldn’t.”

“Because?”

“Because maybe one of Niki’s posse was the blackmailer. So to prevent Niki from tipping anybody off, Jenny hired the private eye on the sly. And she got a clue who the blackmailer was. Maybe more than a clue.”

“And the blackmailer found out he was identified, and had to kill Jenny.”

“Maybe. But there’s another half to it.”

“Which is?”

“Jenny never told Shane she was being blackmailed, she never whispered so much as one word, one hint, to her best friend of six years. She never told me, either, her other best friend for five or six years. Remember how Shane was shocked to discover Jenny seemed to not trust her? I don’t think Jenny didn’t trust Shane. I think it was because she suspected somebody close to Shane, maybe inside the group. We know for a fact that Jenny and Niki never once told anybody else in the group. Jenny played it really, really close to the chest.”

“Because she suspected somebody inside the group.”

“Or connected to somebody inside the group. Just to pull a name out of the hat, suppose she suspected Tina, or Helena or Alice. Would she have told that to Shane? No fucking way. Another thing. Why did the blackmailer specify Niki be the one to deliver the payoffs to the observatory and the Hollywood Bowl?”

“Because the blackmailer was worried that Jenny might see him at the drop site,” Lauren answered. “Jenny came up with the insight that the blackmailer was afraid Jenny would recognize him, but Niki wouldn’t. That pointed away from Niki’s crowd, and directly at Jenny’s group.”

“Bingo. He had to observe the drop, so he’d know it was made, and make sure Niki wasn’t followed by the police.”

“And that’s why he mixed up the delivery locations, to make it harder to set a trap, and also make sure Jenny stayed away,” Lauren said.

“Bingo bingo.”

“And Niki could run right into him and never know who he was. He could be sitting on a bench and she’d walk right by him. So the blackmailer is someone Jenny knew, but Niki didn’t.”

“Half bingo.”

“Half? I didn’t know you could do half a bingo.”

“We just did bingo bingo, so indulge me. It’s only a half bingo because Jenny had two different sets of suspects, and didn’t know which one it might be. One side was somebody inside the group, or somebody connected to Shane, so she couldn’t tell Shane. The other side was the Niki side, if the recognition theory turned out to be wrong. So she couldn’t tell Shane she was being blackmailed, and she couldn’t tell Niki she was hiring a private detective.”

“Let’s look at the drop-off. He could set up at the observatory or Hollywood Bowl before six o’clock. At six, he’d text Jenny and Niki and tell them where the drop was going to be. Then he had several hours to watch and wait to see if any police or anyone else suspicious got there ahead of time to set up something. That’s how he’d know it was safe. He could roam around freely and openly all around the area, looking for cops or surveillance vans, anything.”

Carmen sighed.

“What?” Lauren asked.

“I was just thinking … it must have been lonely for Jenny. In deep trouble like that, and no one to talk to. Suspecting her friends.”

“Yes, I guess so. And I know what else you’re thinking.”

“Yes. Why didn’t she trust me? Why not tell me?”

“Carmen, that’s the easiest question you’ve asked in three weeks.”

“Yeah? Then what’s the answer, because it’s been bugging me for a while.”

“I know. But you don’t know the answer, because it’s easy and obvious and right in front of your nose.”

“Okay, Sherlock Holmes. Tell me.”

“Because she knew how you’d react. She knew what you’d do.”

“Which is?”

“Shit, Carmen, come on. You’d come running. Wherever you were, Hawaii or Australia or Key West, or just some quiet carpet-munching in the Castro, you’d drop everything, pull your finger out of the dyke, jump ship, hop on a plane. And you’d start making trouble. Spoiling for a fight on her behalf. You’d want her to call the cops. Report the blackmail. And the whole gang would ask why you were in town and acting like Emma Peel, running around, asking questions.”

Carmen said nothing.

“True?” Lauren asked.

Sill nothing.

“Car, it wasn’t because she didn’t trust you. It was because she did.”

* * *

When the phone rang Lauren was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. She looked at her phone and saw on the caller ID that it was Carmen, It was nearly midnight.

“Mmmmf mfff emphmmm,” Lauren said.

“What?” Carmen said.

“Brushing teeth. Wait,” Lauren said. She filled a glass with water and washed the foam out of her mouth. “Okay, what?”

“Remember how Marybeth said these people are like sharks, they come back to a popular feeding ground over and over again?”

“Yes? So?”

“Suppose this particular shark had been in these waters before. Suppose Jenny and Niki weren’t the shark's first victims. Maybe Jenny was the third, and Niki the fourth victim?”

“What are you saying?”

“There was a shark who came prowling around our group twice before. I'm thinking maybe this shark came back again, to this fertile feeding ground. That’s what Marybeth said. I'm thinking we already know who this shark is.”

“Spell it out for me.”

“Shane's father. He's responsible for ruining our wedding ... but that was because Shane found out he'd scammed Helena out of $10,000, and was skipping out with it before the wedding. A few weeks later he comes circling back, and takes Shay back away from Shane. There was no money involved, but that’s not the point. Suppose he came back yet again a few years later, and took a bite out of Jenny. Niki, too.”

“Then he'd be the one who killed Jenny? Is that what you're saying?”

“Yes. I guess so.”

“Let me process this. Somehow Shane's father – what's his name?”

“Gabriel. They call him Gabe.”

“Okay. So Gabe McCutcheon somehow gets his hooks on Jenny, and starts blackmailing or extorting her. Then he does the same thing to Niki. So why does he suddenly murder Jenny? What has it got to do with Shane? What does Shane know about this? She and Jenny were lovers at that point, right? You and Shane were lovers the first time around. Has it got something to do with his daughter's lovers?”

“No. He doesn't give a shit about who she's sleeping with. He doesn't care about her at all. He's out for the money. And that first time, it was Helena he took the bite out of, not me. Breaking up Shane and me was just collateral damage. When Shane accidentally caught him leaving the Whistler hotel, that was just a bad break.”

“Bad for you guys. Nothing for him.”

“Whatever. But the point was, he expected to be gone and Shane and I would get married a few hours later, without knowing what he'd done. Shane and I knew nothing about the present he told Helena he wanted to give us. It would have been Helena who realized something was wrong when Gabe wasn't at the reception afterward and didn't give us the ten thousand Helena got for him. She might not even have noticed he wasn’t in the tent. She would have realized after we were married, at the reception, that something was wrong but would she have raised the alarm? Not that he gave a good goddam.”

“Is there a chance that Helena would have shut up about the money? Never mentioned it?”

Carmen thought about it. “She might have realized she'd been scammed, and been too embarrassed to say anything. But either way she'd have never stopped our wedding. Hell, she’s the one who financed it.”

“Would he have known that?”

“Maybe, if Shane had mentioned it in passing. But he’d have known there was lots of money being spent, what with Helena and Peggy there, and limousines and ski stuff and all. A shark like that, he’d have smelled the money. A flounder could have. Anyway, I don’t think ten grand meant all that much to Helena. The genius of it, if you want to use that word, is that Gabe picked a low enough figure that Helena wouldn’t be too concerned about it. In a way, the blackmail amounts for Jenny and Niki weren’t all that high, either. I mean, if he’d asked for a million bucks in a lump sum they might have just said fuck you. But ten grand, that didn’t seem too bad to them, until it started piling up. The amount was manageable, and so were the logistics. And think about it: Ten grand, again. He likes ten grand. It’s a pattern.”

“That’s pretty interesting. And then Gabe really would have made a clean getaway. He scams ten thousand from Helena, she’s embarrassed and says nothing because to her ten grand is pocket change. And neither you guys and nor anybody else ever finds out about it.”

“Right. It might have worked out that way,” Carmen said. “But Shane saw him, and then found out from Carla what Gabe had done. It wasn't Helena who blew the whistle on him, it was Carla.”

Lauren thought about it for a minute, her brows knitted together. “So what do we tell Shane? Do we propose this theory to her? What do we say? It just occurred to us that maybe your father extorted a hundred thousand bucks from Niki and your lover, then killed her?”

“I want to think about this a lot more,” Carmen said.

“Me, too,” Lauren said. “And while I'm thinking, I want to know why Gabe killed Jenny. Extortionists and blackmailers don't normally kill their victims, they just bleed them as dry as they can then go away.”

“Getting rid of the witness?”

“Okay ... but why kill Jenny but not Niki? Shouldn't it be both or neither?”

"Let's think about that. Jenny was notoriously contrary, and she'd spill the beans in a heartbeat. But Niki’s whole private life was hiding nasty secrets, whereas Jenny wanted everybody to out themselves. Like her theory about Bette fucking her gallery co-owner. And anyway, who'd believe a hot mess like Niki who had been in rehab half a dozen times? A paparazzi magnet? How much of what Niki says would you believe?"

"There's two other things to think about," Carmen said.

"Hey, you're getting good at this," Lauren said. "Maybe you missed your calling."

"Carmen Morales, lesbo travel guide slash smokin’ hot DJ slash private eye? I don't think so."

"Maybe not. So what's the two things?"

"First, did Jenny know who the person was who was blackmailing her? If it was Gabe, did she know? If we're right, I'm inclined to think she did know who it was, and she knew Gabe, from the wedding fiasco. She'd met him. And when he came back and took Shea away from Shane, she’d have known about that, too.

"Second, we know Niki was hiding in the bushes," Carmen said. "Do you think she saw the murder? And lied to us this afternoon?"

"She's still alive, so if she did see Gabe kill Jenny, Gabe is unaware of it, or he'd have killed her, too, by now. It would have been easy enough to get access to her."

"True. But if she saw it, why would she keep quiet about it? I mean, none of us think she's brain surgeon material, but still? Her lawyer thinks she’s told us the truth, more or less. You see Gabe murder Jenny and you just hang around in the bushes and get picked up by the cops an hour later and say nothing? Then go through the grilling we all just gave her, and still say nothing?"

"Nope, doesn't work. It's the hanging around after witnessing a murder part, and not being seen by the killer, either. Doesn't fly."

"Still, she was there, within an hour of the murder."

"Yes, absolutely."

"Suppose instead of just witnessing the murder she commissioned it? And watched it?"

"No, same objection," Lauren said. "Hanging around afterward, and being caught by the police during the search of the neighborhood. No, can't buy it." Lauren said.

"So where does that leaves us?”

“In need of sleep. Tomorrow I think we should go over Niki’s testimony with a fine-tooth comb. If we find something, good. If not, we move on.”

“Will the transcript be ready?”

“Marybeth said she’d give it her best shot.”

“Okay, the. Guess I’ll see you in the morning,” Carmen said.

“Yep. Good night, what’s left of it.”

“Yes, good night.”

“Car?”

“Yes?”

“Gabe McCutcheon. That was a brilliant piece of thinking.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Get some sleep.”

“Copy that. 10-4. Rodger dodger.”

“You’re just trying to turn me on, aren’t you?”

Carmen laughed, and hung up the phone.

* * *

Marybeth had moved heaven and earth to get the transcript of Niki’s interrogation typed up overnight, and three copies of it were waiting on the table in the conference room when Carmen and Lauren got there. Shane had texted them she was going to be late, maybe very late, because a problem had cropped up at one of the Sugar Shacks, and Chase needed her. Carmen and Lauren didn’t mind; going over a transcript wasn’t the kind of thing Shane was good at, anyway. If they found something that needed Shane’s input they could always just ask her.

Fueled with coffee and breakfast burritos, they went over Niki’s testimony, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, line by line, word by word. It took all morning, they found nothing they didn’t expect, and when they finished they went to lunch.

“Where’s Marybeth been all morning?” Carmen asked after they’d ordered Cobb salads and iced teas.

“Budget meeting.”

“What do you think she’ll say when we tell her our theory?”

“She’ll say, go get the bastard.”

“Really?”

“No doubt about it.”

“Cool.”

Their food came and they ate silently. It seemed that way, anyway.

“I can hear you, you know,” Lauren said.

“What? Am I eating too loudly?”

“No. I can hear you thinking. You get this look on your face, and your brain gives off this humming sound.”

“Oh. Sorry I’m disturbing your lunch.”

“You’re not disturbing it. I’m just patiently waiting for you to finishing processing.”

“God, I hope I’m not as slow as Shane. She takes forever.”

“True, And at least she gets there, sooner or later. You’re a lot faster, though.”

“Good to know.”

“So spill it.”

Carmen sighed, pushing the remains of the lettuce around in her salad bowl. “Remember when we all talked about what the killer thought about Niki and the investigation, and whether he thought she may have told Marybeth about the blackmail. And what he must have thought when he read or saw on TV that Alice confessed. Whether he thought he was safe or not, and if he staked out the observatory or the Hollywood Bowl to see if any CSI types came out to look around.”

“And no one did. Yes, what about it?”

“Suppose he didn’t have to do too much supposing and worrying about Niki and who told what to the police. Suppose he knew almost exactly what was going on inside the investigation?”

“How would he--” Lauren stopped. “You’re saying he had a source. Inside the investigation. Are you suggesting inside the Sheriff’s Department?”

“No, not at all. But inside the group. A source among the suspects.”

This didn’t take Lauren long at all. “You’re suggesting Max.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the connection between the two murders we could never figure out. Max didn’t kill Jenny, but in some way he had a connection to it. Maybe Max didn’t know the murder was even going to occur, because like we theorized, it was spontaneous and unplanned. But think about this: The blackmailer knew Jenny and Niki were running all over town and having sex here, there and everywhere. How would he know that? Maybe because he had Jenny under surveillance--”

“Which we now know he did.”

“Yes. But how would he know to do that? What gave him the idea to set up in the empty house behind Jenny and Shane’s? Who even knew the house was empty?”

“Well, most of the group did, Max included, I suppose.”

“Right. How would an outsider blackmailer know Jenny and Niki had made the Subaru sex tape? That was knowledge only inside the group and among the studio people, but we think they tried their damnedest to keep it quiet. And they did. That’s what I think, anyway. But who also knew Jenny had been taped before? Who knew about back in the day when Mark was taping everybody in the house, Shane and whoever she was fucking, me and Jenny, parties we had, even casual get-togethers and stuff. Private conversations.”

“Max knew all about that. He was even in some of those tapes himself, not having sex, but just talking or being in a room when Mark was filming. And then when Jenny blew the whistle on Mark after we came back from the cruise, and we got all the tapes from Mark and burned them, Max, would have known about all that. It was an open secret. Alice knew, Kit knew, Bette and Tina knew, because we all talked about it at _The Planet_.”

“So Max is sitting there with knowledge of Mark’s videos, a few of which are sex tapes. He learns about the Subaru sex tape, because that was known to the group, too. And he would have known Jenny was blackmailed or extorted or whatever you call it by Adele, who got her fired and kicked off the studio lot. He would have known Jenny and Niki were screwing their brains out all over town.”

“That’s true, but we all knew all of that. Shane, Bette and Tina, Alice, Kit, Helena, even I knew it up in San Francisco and a thousand miles out to sea.”

“Yes. But most of you didn’t have motive to do anything with that knowledge. Max did. At the end he hated Jenny for breaking up his relationship with Tom. And Jenny and Max’s prior relationship had been rocky, off and on, right?”

“Yes. Just about right from the start.”

“You guys all put on a fundraiser for him to pay for his top surgery, but there wasn’t enough to cover it, and he went into a rage with Jenny over it, right? And Jenny gave back to him all the crap he gave her. Do I have that right?”

“Yes. It was probably the testosterone he was taking. He was like a mad man.”

“Yes, but the chemistry doesn’t matter. It’s the grudge. Max was surrounded by these fairly wealthy women, and still they couldn’t raise enough for his top surgery.”

“Well, we weren’t all ‘wealthy,’ as you put it. I wasn’t, Shane wasn’t, Alice got by okay, but she wasn’t rich. But yes, Helena was. And Bette and Tina made good money.”

“Sure. And then, later, Jenny came into some big money herself, but Max got no benefit from it.”

“No reason he should,” Carmen said.

“No, I agree, but from Max’s point of view, it was just one more thing to hold a secret grudge about. All these upscale women, and Max just scrapping by. And how can I put this next part delicately? Max knew all about Jenny’s fondness for light bondage. Maybe he’d done some of it to Jenny when he was fucking her back when he was a she. Max had walked in on Jenny and Claude going at it up in Whistler on the day or your wedding, right? Claude had her tied to the bedstead, both of them in black bustiers, and Claude diddling Jenny with a riding crop.”

Carmen closed her eyes. “Yes, Max knew. He told everybody he could find, everybody except me, because I was busy getting dressed.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Oh, a couple months later, Alice told me. And Tina mentioned it one time, too. I think it was after both Claude and Marina met each other at Jenny’s house, after Marina came back from her stay in the mental hospital in Italy. Claude and Marina got it on, Jenny told me.”

“Do you think Jenny taped the thing with Claude up in Whistler?

“If she did, I never heard about it, and nobody ever mentioned it. But who knows? Anything’s possible.”

“Okay, I have another question even more delicate than the last one. I’m sorry, but I have to ask it.”

“I know where you’re gonna go.”

Lauren nodded. “Are there any tapes out there of you having sex with anybody? Jenny, Shane, anybody else?”

“No, no videos. Jenny never taped us. That was something she got into later. And certainly not Shane, she really didn’t like being taped or even photographed normally, let alone fucking. That’s one of the few things Shane doesn’t like about sex. She hates bondage and she hates videos of herself. Just about anything else is okay, but not those two.”

“Okay. The reason I ask, I’m just concerned about some day in the future after we catch the killer and there’s a trial, Marybeth and I and the prosecutor would want to make sure the defense didn’t have any surprises.”

“I understand.”

“You have this look on your face. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I did save one of Mark’s videos, but nobody knows about it. And it wasn’t me having sex. It was just Shane and me talking, in the kitchen. It’s not relevant to anything, and nobody knows I have it.”

Lauren let that sink in for a minute. “I’m guessing you take it out once in a while, look at it again.”

The famous “Love Confession” conversation. No way Carmen was going to tell Lauren about it. She shrugged. “It’s not relevant to anything.”

“Okay,” Lauren said. “Let’s get back to Max. Here’s a question you know the answer to. What was Max’s skill set? What kinds of things was he good at?”

“Oh, fuck,” Carmen said quietly. “Computers. Anything to do with computers.”

“Right. And Jenny was, too, right? She put together the ‘Goodbye, Tina and Bette’ video they were watching at the party.”

“Sure. Jenny knew about film editing and all that. She was going to edit _Lez Girls_. And she knew other computer stuff, of course.”

“And Max did, too. Remember Niki saying Jenny was more worried about the blackmailer putting up a web site of Jenny and Niki videos, rather than just e-mailing them out piecemeal, or whatever. It means Jenny was worried about someone with the skill set to build a website and put those videos out on it. How many people in the group can do that? Can you? You have a website for your DJ stuff.”

“That’s true, I do. But I hired a graphics specialist to do most of the design stuff on my site. I can upload and download stuff, that kind of thing.”

“But mostly you do music, you make music tapes and mixes and play lists.”

“Yes, that’s true. But I know enough to do some amateurish stuff. I could build a website, but I’m not very good at it.”

“Compare yourself to Max.”

“I’m a four, he’s a nine. Was a nine. Maybe higher. What are you?”

“Four or five. What level do you think you need to build a web site?”

“Not much. Maybe four.”

“That’s what I think, too. And most porn sites aren’t noted for their wonderful graphics,” Lauren said. “But you could do it if you had to. You’re smart and you could easily teach yourself what you needed to learn if you had to.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“The good news is, you aren’t a suspect. So let’s move on. Bette and Tina?”

“I guess they’re about like me. Tina, of course, can do all sorts of film editing stuff, even though that’s different from building a website. Probably the same with Bette. All the museums and art galleries she’s always worked for had websites. Of course, she had people who did that kind of work for her. But yes, she knows how.”

“Alice?”

“Oh, my god, yes, sure. Alice has been writing and editing for years. She has pretty good general computer skills. Like Bette, Tina or me, she should build one if she wanted to.”

“Kit?”

“Mmm. No, probably not a full-blown web site. She can do all the usual stuff, e-mails and downloading and all that. _The Planet_ has always had a site, but Kit didn’t do it herself. Once in a while she’d mention it, that her web guy did this or that to it, and did we like it. I’d say that Kit doesn’t presently know that much about web sites, mostly due to lack of interest. That’s just not anything she’s interested in. She’s a two or three.”

“Helena?”

“Pretty much same thing. She can do all the usual stuff everybody nowadays can do. But anything fancy or technical, she’d just hire an expert, if she didn’t already have one on staff. And when she owned the movie studio there was an entire department chock full of highly skilled web people. She’d just have to snap her fingers, say ‘Do it,’ and it’d get done. At heart, she’s a true, blue Peabody. Whenever possible, Helena doesn’t do things, she hires people to do the things. She’s a two who can hire a ten with the snap of her fingers.”

“Yes. But would she go to any of them for help building a porno web site for blackmail purposes? I doubt it.”

“No, she wouldn’t.”

“Anyway, it’s one thing to go find a web expert, there’s half a million of them with enough of a skills in California. Any teenager can do it. And finding someone older than 16 who could build a porn site is easy, too. All you have to do is go out to the valley to the porn industry. There’s probably ten thousand people out their building and maintaining porn sites. The infrastructure for the industry out there is mind-boggling, and it’s all out there, humming along and popping up thousands of porn videos every day. And guess who knows about porn companies in the valley?”

“Niki. Well, not Niki so much herself, but whoever that person was in her posse who gave her instructions on how to send the stolen negatives out to a porn mill and make it look like Tina did it. So if Niki doesn’t have porn site expertise, someone in her posse does.”

“That narrows the list of suspects down considerably,” Carmen said, “to maybe eight or ten million people in the lower half of the state. It even includes every male in the state who is fourteen and older. Anybody who’s a three or four or higher.”

“Yep. Even a few precocious eleven- and twelve-year-olds. But here’s what may be really interesting. It probably doesn’t include our killer.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because now we’re working on the idea he needed Max to build the porn web site for him. Our killer is a two or maybe a three, tops. We’re starting to build an entire theory for the one thing we don’t have any idea about, which is why Max was killed, and what his prior involvement might have been. If the killer is truly an outsider, which is what we believe, he wouldn’t have known any of the key pieces of information. Jenny’s sexual proclivities, the fact that she and everybody had once been videotaped by Mark. That Jenny had actually taped herself fucking Niki at the Subaru event, and maybe other times, too. And that Jenny and Niki were having sex all over town. An outsider wouldn’t have known that, but anyone in the group would. So, how does an outsider come by useful knowledge known only to the small group of you, plus maybe a few girlfriends who happened to be on the periphery, like Phyllis, Tasha, Jamie, that lawyer everybody was using, Dylan, Mollie, like that.”

“The inner ring, then the outer ring,” Carmen said.

“Right. Very good. And are we agreed only the Inner Ring had all the necessary data, whereas the Outer Ring only had small bits and pieces?”

“Small bits and pieces, plus no particular motive or animus toward Jenny. And if it was any of them other than Max, we’re back to the question of why Max was killed. So the source inside the group had to be Max, if it was anybody.”

“Right. Let me ask you another question. Of all the group, who generally held a grudge the longest? Who would never forget a slight or an insult, whether intentional or not? Who kept stuff inside? Who let it fester and smolder.”

“Max. No question. And Jenny treated him like shit for years. She helped him, too, but they fought a lot. He earned a lot of it himself. He went more than a little nuts when he was transitioning and taking all that testosterone. She taunted him when she fucked Claude in front of him up in Whistler. He blamed her for making Tom break up with him.”

“Let me ask, was that true? Did Jenny cause the breakup?”

“Mmmm. Hard to say, definitively. But probably, yes. Maybe the point is, Max certainly thought so, whether it was true or not.”

“Right. It’s what Max thought. So next question. Who amongst the group was the sneakiest? Not who was smarter, but who was more cunning? Sly? Who let stuff fester? Who kept anger buried inside? Who carried a grudge longer than anyone else?”

“Max. Max, and Max, and Max. And of course, Max,” Carmen said.

“I figured you’d say that.”

“Well, it was kind of easy. All the rest of us pretty much let it all hang out about 20 seconds after it happened. I mean, come on, drama queens. Yes, Alice was pissed that Jenny stole her film treatment. But it was out in the open from the first second Alice learned about it, and she sure as hell never kept her anger bottled up. Alice will hold a grudge, but it won’t be in secret. Bette, too. She’ll hold a grudge, but you can see it on her face. And she’s wicked smart, but not what you’d call cunning. And you can read her emotions on her face. Or at least, I can. If she’s upset, you can see it between her eyebrows. As for Tina, the words Tina and cunning or sly would never appear in the same sentence. Helena pretty much operates on the surface, she’s not sly or cunning. Kit might hold a grudge, too, but she’d come after you inside of 24 hours. And like that time she was pissed at Dawn Denbo. She went out, bought a gun, stood outside the bar … and couldn’t do it. So, no, not Kit. Last but not least, Shane. Don’t make me laugh, or even giggle hysterically. It’s Max or nobody. Is this what they call profiling? Well, we’ve profiled Max.”

“Yes,” Lauren said.

“The trouble is, if Jenny was thinking about the porno website, she still had to come back to the same two suspect groups. Was it someone on Niki’s side, or was it someone inside the group, probably Max?”

“And so Jenny hires a private detective to find out.”

* * *

They met Marybeth in the lobby as they came back from lunch and rode up in the elevator with her.

“Jesus, I hate budget meetings,” Marybeth said. “You guys making any progress? You saw the Niki transcripts?”

“Yes, we got them, thanks,” Lauren said. “We have news.”

The elevator door opened and they walked out.

“Good. I need some. What is it?”

“We think we know who killed Jenny. We think we know who the blackmailer and the Creep are.”

Marybeth stopped and her eyebrows went up. “Really? Who?”

“Gabe McCutcheon, Shane’s father.”

“Shane’s … I’ll be a son of a bitch!” She glanced at her watch. “Fuck. I have a chief’s meeting in five minutes. That gives me two minutes to take a piss and two minutes to eat a pack of crackers for lunch. Give me the headlines.”

“Remember you said blackmailers and extortionists are like sharks who keep coming back to their favorite feeding grounds? Well, that made Carmen think of Gabe McCutcheon. He took a bite out of Helena six or seven years ago. We think he came back for another bite, this time from Jenny and Niki. And we think he had help from an inside source.”

It didn’t take Marybeth more than a nanosecond. “Max. Because he was murdered, too.”

“Bingo.”

“What kind of evidence do we have?”

“Zip.”

“Story of my life and career. Okay, go find some. And find Gabe McCutcheon, get his ass in here. He’s now a person of interest.”

“Catchy title,” Carmen said.

Marybeth cocked an eyebrow at her. “Where’s Shane?”

“A problem came up at her work.”

“Does she know about her father?” She looked at Lauren. “Have you told her your theory?”

“No. Carmen came up with it last night, and we just now tied Max into it.”

“Nancy Drew, huh? Morales, I knew I liked you. Okay, good work. I gotta run. You guys know what to do. And don’t tell Shane anything for right now, until we get it firmed up. Okay?”

“That’s what we think, too,” Lauren said.

Marybeth cocked her finger and fired it at Carmen with a wink, then hurried off to her next meeting.


	26. Evidence

Carmen’s cell phone jolted awake playing _A Mi Manera_ by the Gypsy Kings, bringing her out of a sound sleep. Groggily she reached to the nightstand for it, saw that the call was from Lauren, and that it was 5:30 a.m.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked, panicked.

“Nothing, it’s okay, I’m sorry to scare you. There’s nothing wrong.”

“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me. It’s five thirty.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I’m not going to ask something stupid like did I wake you.”

“Uh huh. Good to know. Have you even been to bed? You been up all night writing parking tickets? Beating suspects with a rubber hose? Having hot lesbian sex under the Santa Monica pier?”

“Oh, I wish. Either of the last two. No. But I got home, poured myself a glass of wine, had another one, nodded off, and didn’t wake up until 3 a.m. I putzed around for a while, then said fuck it and came in.”

“You’re in the office? In the conference room?”

“Yep. Something was bothering me, so I went looking for it. Well, I found it.”

“I’m not going back to sleep, so don’t fuck around. What did you find?”

“Remember how you said maybe Jenny lied about not hiring a private detective? The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea. So I started looking through her bank statements and withdrawals for a payment or retainer.”

“And you found it?”

“Nope,” Lauren said.

“Lauren!” Carmen said. “You’re starting to piss me off.”

She heard Lauren chuckle. “Jenny had a fair number of cash withdrawals beside the blackmail payments, some of them large enough to be a retainer, but the times weren’t right. She didn’t have an unexplained cash withdrawal in the right time slot, which was right after she and Niki made the last blackmail payment, and Jenny and Niki argued about hiring the detective.”

“Cut to the chase.”

“Jenny didn’t pay cash. She put it on her American Express card. It was right there in front of us all along, on her credit card statements. We were just looking in the wrong stack of paper.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I figured if Jenny went to talk to a detective or a detective agency, she wouldn’t know ahead of time what the retainer would be, or even if she was going to hire them. Her decision was going to be based on a spur-of-the-moment decision, go or no go. We know she didn’t write a check, because there’s none in her bank statement, and she wouldn’t say, okay, I’ll be back tomorrow with the cash. So what she’d say was, ‘Okay, you’re hired, do you take American Express?’”

“Right. She’d want to hire them immediately, that day, that morning or afternoon, because she only had a few weeks before the next payoff was due. The one on March 6.”

“Right.”

“And you found the agency?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“You need to be sitting down.”

“I’m in bed.”

“Excellent. Are you naked? Never mind. The name of the detective agency she hired was … ta da! Drum roll—“

“Lauren—“

“Spade and Archer.”

There was dead silence on the phone. Lauren gave it nearly a full minute. “Did you nod off?”

“No way. No way there’s a detective agency called Spade and Archer. No fucking way.”

“That was my first thought, too. But you know what? It’s brilliant. If your name was Harold. F. Hooker and you risked people nicknaming you Happy whether you liked it or not, and you were a detective working in the movie industry, what would you call your detective agency?”

“That’s his name, Harold Hooker?”

“Babe, this is LA, Hollywood. Movietown U.S.A. Maybe Niki and Justin Bieber never heard of Spade and Archer, but everyone over forty in this town has. So back in the day when they had phone books and you were going through the Yellow Pages looking for a private eye to see if your movie star wife or husband was cheating on you, and you see a quarter page ad for Spade and Archer, who you gonna call? Not Ghostbusters. And if you want to specialize in the movie industry, as opposed to, say, real estate or aerospace, or bikini sugar-waxing, how do you sell yourself? With a famous movie name the generation of his day would recognize and remember. It’s marketing, and like they said in that movie, it’s Chinatown, Jake. You don’t need Lindsay Lohan to recognize the name Spade and Archer, you only need Lindsay Lohan’s lawyer and agent and accountant to recognize it. But why am I telling you? You’re the Hollywood expert and movie trivia buff.”

“Have you ever heard of them? I never have, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

‘No, I never did. But it’s a big city and LA County’s an even bigger county. Spade and Archer was only one guy, anyway. There was no Archer. And I’m not in the movie industry like he was. Or like you were.”

“I was down near the bottom of the industry, though. I was just a field hand in the trenches. Okay, mixed metaphor, never mind. I haven’t had my coffee yet. When can we go talk to him? This morning?”

“We can’t talk to him.”

There was another silence. “Don’t tell me,” Carmen finally said.

“Yep.”

“When?”

“A week after Max was murdered.”

“Oh, my god,” Carmen whispered. “How do you know?”

“I Googled his name. There was a story in the LA Times that he was missing, and then a couple stories about the search effort, then the story just disappeared. He hasn’t been declared legally dead or anything, but the wife is sure he is.”

“Another accident? Does she suspect something? How did it happen?”

“Down in Ensenada. Apparently Hooker liked to go deep-sea fishing. Went down there on vacations with his wife. He went out one morning on a charter boat, just him and the boat captain he liked to go out with. They’d been out before maybe a dozen times. She went to a pottery class, she told reporters she didn’t do well on small boats and going after swordfish was boring, and there was nothing to do but watch or read a book. She didn’t start worrying until mid-afternoon, when the boat should have come back. They were supposed to go out to dinner, and he’d want to shower and change clothes, have a drink. When he didn’t show up she called the harbor master and the Mexican Coast Guard. Neither had heard anything, no SOS messages or distress calls.”

“No helicopters, anything like that?”

“There’s dozens of boats out there, maybe, hundreds on a bright, sunny afternoon. So how do you tell which one is the boat Hooker is on? They fly around, nobody waves at them, no distress signals. Even if the radio’s out they have flare guns, flags, lots of ways to attract attention, but nobody did. At least, nobody who was Hooker and the boat captain.”

“So they just disappeared?”

“So it seems.”

“And it was never a missing persons case? You and Marybeth never worked it?”

“Nope. Missing fishing boat in Mexico. Not our problem, not our jurisdiction. Nothing suspicious. Rickety Mexican fishing boat. Happens all the time.”

“Do we believe it?”

“If you were betting ten bucks on it, how would you bet? Totally unrelated accident, sinking with no witnesses and no trace, or somehow related to two previous murders that were tricked up to look like accidents? It’s the ‘no trace’ part that really bothers me.”

“Lauren, you’re scaring me.”

“Good.”

“I can’t believe it. Three murders.”

“Four. Gotta figure the boat captain was murdered, too, unless he was in on it. But he had a wife and kids, and hasn’t been seen since.”

“Right, four. Have you told Marybeth?”

“Car, it’s not even 6 a.m.”

“Oh, yeah. Okay, I see why you had to call and wake me up. When are you going to tell Marybeth?”

“Soon as she comes in.”

“What do you want me to do? Come in?

“Unless you want to go back to sleep.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Like I could do that, now. There’s not enough Ambien in LA for me to go back to sleep.”

“On your way in, how about picking up some breakfast? I’m starved. I’ve had nothing but coffee and a bag of Fritos since last night.”

“Sure, okay. What do you want?”

“How about some breakfast tortillas from that place near you that you like?”

“Sure, you got it. I gotta take a shower first, but I’ll get in as soon as I can.”

“Cool. Text me a photo.”

“A photo? Of what?”

“Of you in the shower.”

“Hey, don’t go all Harvey Weinstein on me.”

“Who?”

“Harvey Weinstein, the movie producer. He did _The Crying Games, Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love._ A lot of movies.”

“That’s your specialty area. What about him? He a bad guy?”

“I don’t know, but there’s rumors.”

“Oh, I see. Rumors. In Hollywood. About bad behavior. Hard to believe. I heard Gomer Pyle was gay.”

“No! I’m crushed.”

“You’re crushed, I’m hungry. Go jump in the shower and hurry up, no morning bliss with the magic wand.”

“Oh, you know me so well. Not even a quicky?”

“Bite me,” Lauren said, and hung up. Carmen laughed.

* * *

It was 7:15 by the time Carmen got to the conference room with a brace of tortillas, a container of her favorite pico de gallo, and better coffee than they could get down the hall in the break room, from _The Planet_.

“You didn’t get this from that restaurant,” Lauren said, opening a Tupperware with the tortillas in it. “I’m so hungry I could – hey, did your mom make these? Oh, god, I love her food! And is this her pico? Her pico de gallo is to die for.”

Carmen had brought paper plates and real silverware, and they dug in.

“When I said get some tortillas from that place near you, I didn’t mean your mom’s refrigerator.”

“Subconsciously that’s exactly what you meant.”

“Please don’t go rooting around in my subconscious. You don’t know what you’ll find. Anyway, I suspect I could make a list of 47 damn good reasons why Shane was a complete, total fool for not marrying you,” Lauren said, half her tortilla gone, “but right near the top of the list is your mother’s cooking.”

“Would that be right before sex, or right after it on the list?” Carmen asked.

“I don’t know. We haven’t had sex, so I’d just be guessing,” Lauren said.

“That’s what keeps the mystery alive in our relationship,” Carmen said. “I mean, for all you know, maybe I’m really lousy in bed.”

“Anything’s possible, but I’ll take my chances,” Lauren said. “But just in case, I have a fix for that, just in case you suck at sucking.”

“I’m all ears,” Carmen said.

“Hardly. But what I’d do is just smear this pico de gallo all over your body, and lick it off. Then I wouldn’t care if you were any good. Except to turn over, you wouldn’t have to move. Hell, you could sleep through it.”

“Interesting,” Carmen said. “And when it’s over instead of lighting cigarettes we could have a couple of churros.”

“Works for me.”

“Are we done sexually bantering? Because I had another idea.”

“Boy, you’re a major buzzkill this morning. Did I call you too early? Okay, Sherlock, hit me.”

“Remember we talked about how the stalker, who we now think was Gabe, was a smoker? And he used to come out into the back yard to smoke so he didn’t stink up somebody else’s house?”

“Rings a bell. He smoked when he was up on the cliff at La Jolla cove, too, so Niki said. And if he was camped out somewhere near the observatory and the Hollywood Bowl for the money drops, he probably smoked there, too.”

“Right. But here’s what I’m thinking. What if there are still cigarette butts behind that house? Somewhere in the yard, probably back by the lot line by the fence if he was peeping on Shane and Jenny’s house, or even watching the action in the pool.”

“They’d be old, decomposed cigarette butts by now.”

“I know. But would they still be there, and can you get DNA from them?”

Lauren looked at Carmen.

“Because if you could—” Carmen started.

“—it would show it was Gabe back there. It would tie him to the scene. But we don’t have Gabe or his DNA on file to do a match to the cigarette butt, at least not that I know of. And anyway, I don’t know if you can get DNA from a two-year-old cigarette butt that’s been out in the weather.”

“You can get DNA from Shane, right? Her father’s would be similar, right?”

“A defense attorney would poke a ton of holes in it. If the match wasn’t dead solid perfect, he could say it was Shane’s DNA on the cigarette butt, not Gabe’s.”

“Yes. But why would Shane be standing around smoking in somebody else’s back yard? She’d smoke in her own house, and in her own yard. Which she did, but she put her butts out in an ash tray on the back porch. She never flicked them out into the yard. But see, it might not be good enough for court, but would it be good enough for a warrant? Whaddaya call it, probable cause? And even if it didn’t stand up in court, it would tell us we were on the right track. If we can prove conclusively it was or wasn’t Gabe--”

“It’d be good enough for us. We’d know what to do next. Which suspects to eliminate, which to keep working on. Hang on, I know somebody. What time is it? Five of eight.” Lauren picked up her cell phone, went into the contacts, and found a number. She put the phone up to her ear. “One ringy-dingy … two ringy-dingies … Hey, Janice, this is Detective Lauren Hancock in Missing Persons … yeah, good, how are you? Listen, I know it’s early, but is Margaret in yet? … Okay, anybody else back there who knows a whole lot about DNA? I have one fairly simple, quick question … okay, I’ll hold.” Lauren put the phone on speaker and set it down. They looked at it.

“Detective Hancock? This Mike Allison. What can I do for you?”

“Good morning, Mike, I hope I didn’t pull you away from your coffee and e-mails.”

“You did, but I have my coffee in my hand, so it’s all good. What can I do for you?”

“Simple question. Is it possible to extract usable DNA from a two-year-old cigarette butt?”

“Simple? You’re kidding, right? How well preserved? Indoors, outside in the weather?”

“Probably outside. I don’t know how decomposed.”

“What’s it look like?”

“I don’t have it yet.”

“You don’t have it?”

“No, but if it’s usable I’ll try to go get one. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Well, short answer is ‘maybe,’ but you know how it goes. Yes, it’s theoretically possible. There’s been some research. Wait, let me Google it for you.” The line was silent for a minute. “Ah, here we go,” Allison said. “Got a pencil? Write this down. Advances in Forensic Haemogenetics 4. You spell it H, A, E, M, O, genetics, all one word, then roman numeral 4. Edited by C. Rittner and P. M. Schneider, S, C, H, N, E, I, D, E, R. 14th Congress of the International Society of Forensic Haemogenetics, Mainz, that’s a city in Germany, September 18 and 19, 1991--”

“Nineteen ninety-one? That’s a pretty long time ago in terms of DNA research.”

“Yes,” Allison said, “so they’ve undoubtedly gotten better. But here’s the part you want, it’s on page 62. The presentation was called quote SDS-PAGE Typing of HLA-DQA1 and pMCT118 after PCR Amplification unquote.” He waited while Lauren wrote it down, following his careful spellings. “Ready? Let’s see, two samples, amplified by … you don’t need that … Quote. In both cases only highly degraded DNA could be extracted. The first case involved two suspects and two-year-old cigarette butts parentheses four butts close parens were investigated. The band pattern shows that both suspects could be excluded with YNZ22 parens Figure 9, -- there’s a photo of the DNA banding -- close parens, and MCT, close quote.”

“Which means…?”

“The DNA was highly degraded, but they got enough data from it to clear two suspects.”

“I assume it could also have proved it was them, if it can be flipped around, right?”

“Yes, basically it’s them or it’s not them. Yes. Here’s another article, looks like by a Russian guy, Aleksandar Apostolov, no, it says he’s from Sofia, Bulgaria, same difference. It’s called quote DNA Identification of Biological Traces on Cigarettes: Vices Reveal. Biotechnology & Biotechnological Equipment, 26:3, 2994-2998, DOI: 10.5504/BBEQ.2012.0044. And it’s from 2014.” Allison explained what all the citation data meant. “Here’s what the abstract says. Quote. We present two cases representative of a group of 28 cases with cigarette butts that were from 10 days to 2 years old. The proper collecting and storage of the material is very important for successful DNA typing from saliva traces and epithelial cells from the lips and oral cavity. Meeting these conditions would increase the chances for successful DNA profiling of biological traces on evidence of an earlier date. Unquote. Got it?”

“Close enough for what I need. Thanks, Mike, I owe you one.”

“Any time, detective. Good hunting.”

Lauren closed out the call and looked at Carmen. “Refill your coffee and let’s go.”

“Back to the scene of the crime?” Carmen asked.

“Roger dodger. 10-4. Copy that,” Lauren said, making Carmen laugh. She stood up and put on a leather jacket that had been hung on the back of her chair.

Carmen realized Lauren was dressed the way she had once described Dani Reese. She thought about saying that, but decided to keep silent. Instead, she asked, “Should we call Shane and have her meet us there?”

“Hell, no. I don’t want her DNA anywhere near that back yard. If we do find something, I don’t want there to be the slightest suspicion Shane contaminated something, spit on something, or sneezed, or even breathed on it. And we don’t want her to know we’re looking at her father.”

“Right. Understood,” Carmen said. They’d have to start lying to Shane.

* * *

It was just after nine when they rolled up to the Creep House and parked at the curb. The front door opened and a man in his late 30s in a military uniform and carrying a small briefcase came out and walked toward one of the two cars parked in the driveway. He didn’t look creepy. He stopped and looked at Lauren and Carmen as they got out of Lauren’s car and approached him. He smiled. “Whatever you ladies are selling I’m buying.”

Lauren got out her badge case and flipped it open so the man could see the badge. She read the bars on his shoulders. “Captain Scofield? Hi, I’m Detective Lauren Hancock, LA County Sheriff’s Department, and this is my partner, Carmen Morales. We’re not selling anything, but if you have a moment we’d like to talk to you.”

The man looked at them suspiciously. “Is there a problem?”

“No, nothing like that,” Lauren said. “We working on a cold case that happened in the house with the pool diagonally across from your back yard two years ago. We know you and your wife were in the military and out of the country when it happened.”

“Jenny Schecter,” the man said.

“That’s right,” Lauren said. “Did you know her?”

“We talked to her a couple times, over the back fence. And when we moved in she brought us a housewarming present. Flowers, a tea rose, I think. That was nice of her. My wife planted it. I think it was Jenny’s way of saying our lot needed landscaping, which it did. She was kind of proud of how their lot looked, a lot of plants and shrubs.”

Carmen kept her face still, but was strangely moved. She was the one who had done the lion’s share of gardening when she’d lived there. She had no idea Jenny had even noticed it, much less had liked it. Jenny had never said anything about it. And that was annoying.

“Did you also know Shane McCutcheon? She was Jenny’s housemate.”

“Yes, not so much to talk to but I knew her on sight. She’d come out and sit on the back porch and smoke.”

“Speaking of smoking, can I ask if you smoke?”

“Me? No. I did when I was a kid in high school, but I quit when I went into the Air Force after college.”

“How about your wife?”

“Betsy? No, she never smoked, even back in the day.”

“Anyone else in your household who smokes? Now, or within the last few years?”

“No. There’s just my wife and me.”

“You ever have barbecues or cook-outs in the backyard with friends who smoke?”

“Yeah, we’ve had a few cook-outs, but I can’t remember anyone smoking. Most of our friends are military or ex-military, not smokers. Our parents don’t smoke. I’ve got a brother in Florida, he smokes, but he hasn’t been here. Why all the interest in smoking?”

“We have a suspicion the person who killed Jenny was a smoker, and that he may have spied on her house from your backyard, while you and your wife were overseas.”

“The squatter?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“The squatter. My wife and I think there may have been a squatter here when we were in Germany. That’s where I was deployed, Ramstein Air Base, for a year. That was when Jenny was killed, a few months before we came back.”

“What made you think there was a squatter?”

“We weren’t even sure there was one. It was just little stuff. When we came home Betsy said she thought someone had been smoking in the house. Not recently or anything. But she has a good nose for cigarette smoke, since she was never a smoker herself. She can meet a stranger and tell if they smoke just from smell in their clothes. Me, I can’t tell. And then there was the lock on the garage door.”

“What lock? What about it?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.” They walked down the driveway to the rear of the property, where there was a single-bay, single-story garage. The house and the garage had originally been mirror images of Jenny and Shane’s house and garage when they were first built, one street over. It was Jenny’s boyfriend/husband/now ex-husband/widower Tim Haspel who had converted their garage into a writer’s office/guest bedroom more than eight years earlier, before Carmen had transformed it into a recording studio/sex playpen. Scofield’s garage had stayed a garage. There was a door on the side near the front, facing the Scofield’s backyard. It had four window panes on the top half, and was locked with a padlock hasp and a combination padlock.

“The lock and hasp are new,” Scofield said. “Well, a year-and-a-half, since we got back from Germany. When we got home, the old hasp and padlock were here, but somebody had pried it open from the jamb, so you could open the door without messing with the padlock. When it pulled away from the jamb, the screws ripped out some wood. Somebody had patched it with caulk. The four screws that held the hasp in were still in the screw holes, but somebody had cut them on the back side, so the screw was basically just the head, so it would give the appearance of being screwed into the jamb, but it wasn’t.”

“They were trying to make it look like it was locked. But they could go in and out whenever they wanted.”

“Yes, exactly. So when I discovered it I got a new hasp and new padlock. The screws I put in are a lot longer, and nobody’s going to pry it open without destroying the entire jamb.”

“What’s in the garage, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“That’s the weird thing. Nothing much. And nothing was missing. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Scofield spun the knob on the padlock combination, left, right, left, and it popped open. He removed it, opened the door, and hung the padlock on its loop in the door. He went in and flicked on an overhead light. “Come in,” he said.

Lauren and Carmen entered the garage and looked around. Like Carmen’s studio it was an extra-wide single-bay building, large enough for one car as well as generous space for storage and a workbench, but not quite big enough for two cars. In the center of the room were two large pieces of gym equipment, a walking treadmill and a weightlifting bench with a rack of weights and barbells. They looked more than a few years old.

“Where are you stationed now, if I may ask?” Lauren asked.

“Down at LA Air Force Base,” Scofield said. “Only we’re not much of a base. Mainly a big PX, and a lot of offices. We’re just a couple blocks south of LAX. I shoot down La Cienega, pick up the 405.” He gestured at the equipment. “Betsy and I like to work out in here. She walks on the treadmill. I work out with weights. I don’t know, I guess whoever broke in could have stolen some of this stuff, but as you can see it’s pretty heavy, and not easy to move. I mean, you could cart it off in the back of a truck, if you wanted. But apparently he didn’t want to. The rest of the stuff, well, go look at it. It’s not worth anything, even to a squatter.”

Lauren and Carmen walked behind the gym equipment and looked around: A home-made workbench with a pegboard wall with old tools on it. Some tools on the workbench, bins and jars of nails and screws. A modest collection of Harry-Homeowner stuff, nothing fancy, new, or expensive looking. A couple of rickety-looking storage racks with cans of paint and spray cans of WD-40. Turpentine, paint thinner. Tubes of caulk. A former pickle jar with paint brushes. An ancient 3-gallon gasoline can next to a gasoline lawnmower, not ancient but not new or upgraded up with a self-starter, $200 new at Home Depot, $25 bucks at a yard sale. Some empty Mason jars. Three different-size cardboard boxes, one with rags. A quart of two-cycle oil for the lawnmower, two quarts of 5-W30 oil for a car. A jug of antifreeze, a jug of car window-washer fluid, nearly empty. A plastic paint bucket with two baseball gloves, two ancient softballs, and two baseball bats in it. Two bicycles, suspended upside down from big hooks screwed into the overhead rafters, not new, but they looked to be in good working condition. Two blue fold-up camping chairs, one in a carry bag, one loose, and a folded up beach umbrella; Shane and Carmen had once had one almost exactly like it. There were also the three trash receptacles used in West Hollywood, a blue one for recyclables, a green one for lawn and yard waste, both supplied by the city, and an ordinary one anyone could buy for their non-recycle trash. Just the usual homeowner stuff you’d find in maybe ten million other garages. Twenty million. Nothing worth stealing that didn’t weight much. Some of it was dressed in cobwebs.

“Can we look around out back?” Lauren asked.

“Sure. Help yourself.”

They went out into the backyard.

“Fuck,” Carmen murmured quietly.

“What?” Lauren asked.

“That,” Carmen said. “New fence.”

“Oh, yeah. We put that in last fall,” Scofield said. “Betsy got on me. The old privacy fence was pretty old, falling down. It was ugly, too. Just these unpainted pickets. Actually, it was on the other property, I guess Jenny and Shane’s property, and we had to look at that back side of it. So one day we said enough’s enough, and we bought this fence, and put it up on our side of the lot line. Jenny was right: we needed landscaping. Eventually the people who moved into Jenny’s house took down the old rotten fence on their side of the line.”

They stared at the new fencing. It was bright white, made out of some kind of plastic. It was very nice, pleasant to look at, and six feet tall. Along its base Scofield and his wife had landscaped flower beds with shrubs and plants, with smooth, white pebbles filling in around them. It looked very nice. The landscaped flower bed ended at the side of the garage. Lauren walked back there and looked at the gap between the fence and the back wall of the garage. It was only about 18 inches wide now, and had once been only about two feet wide before the new fence went in. There were white pebbles covering the ground all the way to the far side. Carmen walked back and took a peek, too.

Lauren turned to Scofield. “What used to be back here?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Weeds. Dirt. It was an eyesore, but nobody ever went back there. We dumped a lot of weed killer back there and put down the pebbles for ground cover. That way rainwater gets through.”

“Got it,” Lauren said. She and Carmen drifted along the back lot line, but had given up all hope of finding anything. She turned to Carmen. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

Carmen frowned.

They looked at the fence, the back of what had been Shane and Jenny’s house, and to the right side the back of what had been Bette and Tina’s house.

“Car?”

“Yeah?”

“If you were staking out Jenny and Shane’s house, would you stand back here?”

Carmen looked at her. Then she caught on. “If it was chilly out, like it can get in January, it’d be cold.”

“Especially if it was breezy. Wind chill.”

“If you wanted a cigarette, somebody of the other side might see your cigarette lighter when you lit up.”

“They might see the glow from your cigarette.”

“There’s no place to sit. You’d have to stand all the time.”

“Hours and hours of standing. Maybe hundreds of hours standing.”

“The old fence is still on the other side,” Carmen said. “Imagine how it was before this fence went in. You could see over a five-foot fence easy enough. Suppose it starts to rain. It doesn’t rain all that often, but still, it really does rain in Hollywood. So you stand in the rain, getting soaked, smoking your rain-sodden cigarette. No. No, it just plain doesn’t work.”

“No, it doesn’t. Captain, can we go back into the garage?”

“Sure.”

They went back into the garage, and Lauren and Carmen walked to the back window and looked out. “You can see, but not very well,” Lauren said, referring to Jenny and Shane’s back yard, patio and the back of their house.

“No,” Carmen said. She turned and went to the weight-lifting bench, and dragged it over near the window. Then she got one of the fold-up camping chairs, the one not in the carrying bag, brushed cobwebs off it, unfolded it, and placed it on top of the weight-lifting bench. She carefully climbed up and sat in the chair. She had a perfect perch from which to look into Jenny and Shane’s back yard. Scofield was taller than Lauren, and Carmen’s line of sight on the rig put her eyes a good foot higher than his. If she reached up, even while sitting, she could just touch the overhead beams of the garage ceiling. The killer – Gabe -- was at least five or six inches taller than Carmen, and would have had an even better view.

“Damn, girl,” Lauren muttered.

“You could sit here for hours and hours,” Carmen said, looking out the back window from her perch. “You could have a brewski or a cold Mountain Dew, and sit here dry and warm as happy as a clam for hours and hours. You could see Shane and Jenny and all their friends, lovers and acquaintances come and go. If anybody fucked in the kitchen, you could see some of that, too, if it was on the table. If it was on the countertop, that would be harder to see, but you might catch some of the foreplay. If Jenny or Shane or anybody else went to the refrigerator, you could see what they were wearing or not wearing.”

Carmen didn’t mention the number of times she’d walked down the hall, fresh from an orgasm in Jenny or Shane’s bed, to fetch a couple of bottles of water from the fridge, wearing only her golden caramel-colored, cum-stained skin. Had Scofield ever seen her from the upstairs back bedroom window? He gave no indication he ever had.

“I can just see the corner of Bette and Tina’s pool,” Lauren said, looking out the back window from the extreme left side.

Carmen climbed down, pulled the weight-lifting bench two feet to the left, and climbed back out and sat down in the beach chair again. “You can see the shallow end, maybe only two or three feet,” she said. “But you can see who is going in and out. Who’s there, if they walk up or down the steps into the pool. You can’t see the deep end or the diving board.”

Carmen had fucked Jenny in the shallow end once, on those steps. But as a rule, she and Jenny preferred fucking in the shower. She and Shane tended to fuck in the pool, in the deep end, one or the other of them hanging onto the diving board overhead. Shane was a much better swimmer than Jenny, more comfortable in deeper water. Tina, Bette, Alice, and anybody else who’d been in the pool fucked all over the place. Jenny had once confessed to Carmen that on the evening of the day she had first moved in she had peeked through the fence and watched Shane fuck some girl in the pool, before she had ever met Shane. She had assumed the two girls were Bette and Tina. Jenny had never said anything to Shane, but one night she had confessed to Carmen that the very first time she had ever set eyes on Shane she was fucking some girl in Bette and Tina’s pool. Welcome to West Hollywood.

Had Carmen ever been spied upon in that pool, she wondered. Carmen had put in a lot of quality time in that pool, and in that backyard, some of it naked or semi-naked and X-rated, but most of it PG-rated and purely social. After-work glasses of wine with Bette, Tina, or usually both. Cookouts. The party for Dana right after she came home from her double mastectomy, right after she and Shane had gotten those matching bird tattoos on the backs of their necks. That was PG-rated up until the moment she had dropped her bikini bottom to show Bette, Alice and Tina her legendary pubic flowerbox tattoos.

Had anyone been spying on them? Carmen felt sure the answer was no. She’d have felt it, somehow. And Shane, whose sensory powers were off the charts, would have sensed it. So no. Whatever they’d done in the pool, in the studio, on their own back porch, or in their kitchen had gone unobserved. That was a good thing. There had been quite a bit of action, back in the day. She saw Lauren looking at her, grinning. “Memories?” Lauren asked quietly, her back to Scofield, so he couldn’t hear.

Carmen smiled. “I don’t kiss and tell,” she said, also keeping it away from Scofield.

“Bullshit,” Lauren whispered.

“Try to focus, Detective Hancock,” Carmen said under her breath. She turned to the workbench and the back wall of the garage. “I’m spending a lot of time sitting up on my raised beach chair, looking out the back window,” she said, in a normal voice. “Rain or shine, day or night. And one day or evening I’m sitting here and what do I see? I see famous film actress Niki Stevens, who I have seen here before, walk up the driveway from the street and go in the back door. She’s carrying some sort of large bag, or cardboard box, or something, and it’s heavy. I don’t know what’s in it. Niki gets the back door key under the rock, she opens the backdoor, and goes in. She comes out a little while later, and it’s somehow easy to tell the bag or box is now empty. She leaves. You know Jenny and Shane aren’t home, and deduce they aren’t coming home anytime soon, because Niki Stevens seems to know that. She’s not hurrying or feeling pressured to leave before somebody comes home. So Niki leaves, and I’m sitting here. What do I do?”

“I’m wondering what Niki dropped off,” Lauren took up the narrative. “Laundry? Groceries? Strap-on dildos? What was in the bag or box? And maybe she made two trips in and out, not one. Two bags or two boxes. Ten big film canisters might have taken two trips.”

“Lauren,” Carmen said.

“Yes, grasshopper?”

“There were no fingerprints on the canisters. Anyway, not Niki’s. Not anybody’s who were unexplained.”

“No. So Niki was wearing gloves.”

“We never asked her.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“But suppose she was?” Carmen asked.

“I’m sitting her watching her drop off something, and I see she’s wearing rubber gloves, latex gloves. Can I tell that from here? Suppose it’s dark.”

“There’s the back light on the porch,” Carmen said. “It’s on a motion sensor, so it comes on. Otherwise it’s daylight. All you have to see is just one second that she’s wearing gloves. And maybe she’s not wearing those transparent gloves, maybe she’s wearing those flaming yellow dishwasher gloves. Blue gloves. I’ve seen a lot of pale blue gloves in doctor’s offices. My gyno uses blue gloves.”

“Mine, too,” Lauren said. “So I’m sitting her and I see she’s wearing gloves of some kind. It’s early February, worst case a balmy 55 or 60 degrees, so nobody’s wearing gloves or mittens. But Niki’s wearing gloves, so now I’m suspicious as hell. Now I know she’s not dropping off something innocuous.”

“One other thing,” Carmen said. “Maybe I know Jenny and Niki spent the night fucking their brains out just a few days earlier. Maybe I saw Niki leave in the morning. Maybe I saw Niki leaving but not in a friendly way. Maybe she left yelling something at Jenny. Or at least very unhappy.”

“Okay, a problem. Did they tend to go in and out the front door, or the back door? In my experience there’s front door people and back door people. I know people who almost never use their front doors, and people who almost always use their back doors. Which were they?”

“I hope you aren’t suggesting anything naughty,” Carmen said. They laughed, and Scofield did, too.

“Don’t look at me, I’m not here. I didn’t hear a thing,” he said, laughing.

They all laughed again.

“Focusing, focusing,” Carmen said. “They were back door people. They always parked in the side driveway and came around the back. They always went in and out that way most of the time.” She was careful to say “they” and not “we.” Lauren understood.

“I have to be curious about what Niki dropped off,” Lauren said. “More than curious. Really, really curious. Because I saw she was wearing gloves. No fingerprints. So what did she take into the house?”

“I think I’d have to go look,” Carmen said.

“Me, too,” Lauren said. “So I go in and look around after she leaves. What do I find?”

“Nothing,” Carmen said.

“No?”

“No. I look around, but I don’t touch anything. I look in every room. There is nothing sitting out that was obviously dropped off. I think about it for a minute, but I don’t solve it. Whatever it was, it was put away somewhere. Not left out somewhere, on a table, bed or chair. Maybe not hidden, per se, but certainly not out in the open. And it would take a while to search the whole house, so I leave. I come back here, and wait to see what develops.”

“And if it was a bomb, the house explodes and kills somebody. But it wasn’t a bomb and nothing explodes. Nobody dies. There is no apparent reaction from Jenny or Shane.”

“Meaning the delivery was either basically harmless, or else hidden.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Lauren said, “because we already know it was hidden.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Carmen said. “I need me a smoke.” She mimed getting out a pack of cigarettes from her breast pocket, fishing out a cigarette, putting it in her mouth, lighting it with an imaginary lighter. She mimed taking a drag and then flicking ashes onto the garage floor. “See, here’s the next problem. My Uncle Mike was a lighting technician for the movie studios. Years ago they were allowed to smoke on the job, but they weren’t allowed to just flick their cigarette butts anywhere they pleased, like most smokers, and they couldn’t just flick ashes around. They were on movie sets, you know? So you know what they used to do? They’d carry around a small metal film canister, any kind of small container, in their pockets or tool belts, and flick their ashes into it. And when they were done they could just drop the butt into the container, and put the cap back on. That would extinguish the butt if they didn’t stub it out, and it would solve the problem of a butt being a fire hazard, because nothing burns as easily as a Hollywood movie set. They are all wood and canvas and paint. They go up, poof. So the tech people carried around their own little, portable cigarette disposal systems. I probably ate Gerber strained peas and Gerber strained peaches, and Uncle Mike used my baby food jars for his cigarette butts.”

“The History of Hollywood, Part Nine Hundred Eighty-Seven, Behind the Scenes,” Lauren said. “I saw it on PBS.”

“I must have missed than one,” Scofield said, smiling.

“It wasn’t a biggie,” Carmen said from her perch. “Lauren, would you get me a babyfood jar for my ashes, please?”

Lauren caught on, and turned to look around.

“Oh, Jesus,” Scofield muttered. They all looked at his work bench. There were a dozen Mason jars, pickle jars and mayonnaise jars with various, sundry and random Harry Homeowner parts in them. There were babyfood jars, too, some with labels still on them. They held nuts, bolts, screws nails, staples, washers, maybe a dozen of them. Some had lids, some didn’t.

“Lauren,” Carmen said. “I’m sitting here smoking. I don’t know how long I’m going to be here. Maybe weeks, even months. I could use a baby food jar, and take it with me when I leave, empty it, and bring it back for use next time. Or I could get a bigger jar, a pickle or mayonnaise jar, and just leave it here for next time. It would hold more butts than a babyfood jar. I’d need a lid on it, to put the cigarette out and also keep it from spilling in my jacket pocket.”

“If he took it with him the night he killed Jenny, we’re fucked,” Lauren said.

“Yes,” Carmen said. “Lauren, you know what I like about this fold-up camping chair? I’ve got one just like it up in San Francisco, I take it to outdoor concerts. A million people have one like it. And you know what? It has arm rests, and each arm rest has one of those pockets that you set a beer can or a soda can in.”

Scofield looked at the beach chair and cleared his throat. “Can I butt in here, no pun intended. Neither of you ever smoked, is that right? Well, I did, in high school and college. And yes, you can tip your ashes and drop your finished butts into a bottle or a soda can. But here’s the thing: the hole in the top of a beer or soda can is kind of small, and you have to pay attention every time you flick, because you can miss. But see, something like a jar with a wide top is much easier. That’s what I’d use, if it was me. And here’s the other thing. You can’t tip your ashes into the can until you’re finished drinking from it. So you have to have a separate container for ashes.”

“Thanks,” Lauren said. “Always happy to hear from an expert.”

“Something’s wrong,” Carmen said. “Here’s what I don’t get. Our squatter has been staking out Jenny and Niki and Shane for some time, weeks or maybe even longer. And then one night, for no known reason we can think of, he crosses into Bette and Tina’s backyard, climbs their deck, and murders Jenny. That makes no sense unless it was accidental. Or unintentional. Whatever you want to call it.”

“Unpremeditated.”

“Yes. That. And like you and Marybeth said, blackmailers don’t kill their victims. They keep bleeding them. Why do you spy on somebody for weeks, film them, blackmail them, and suddenly decide to kill them? You don’t. And one other thing has been bothering me.”

“Yes?”

“Where was Jenny? What was she doing all that night, right up until the murder?”

“What do you mean?”

“They were all there to watch Jenny’s goodbye video she made. Fine. And they are all up in Bette and Tina’s media room, and Jenny starts the video, which we know is three hours long, what with all the stuff she put into it. She leaves the room, people are watching, somebody gets up, gets a drink, comes back, they get some potato chips, whatever. They come and go. They go to the bathroom to pee. And you know what? For most of that time, Jenny’s not in the room. Why not? Where was she, and what was she doing?”

“Hmmm,” Lauren muttered. “The last conversation we know Jenny had with anyone was with Bette, who kind of threatened her, and said she wouldn’t abide anyone harming her family. That was the phrase she used, wouldn’t abide. Then Jenny starts the tribute video sometime a little after seven, and leaves the room.”

“Right. And no one sees her alive again, according to their testimony. But let’s focus on the Creep. He’s sitting here. What does he see?”

“When does he get here?”

“We don’t know, but let’s assume he’s here before anyone else. So he’s sitting here, smoking and sipping his Mountain Dew, and he’s seen Bette and Tina getting ready for the party all day, setting out Japanese lanterns, and so on. He’s seen contractors working on their house for several weeks, adding the whole second floor and the big deck, and he also knows they are moving, because of the real estate sign on the front lawn. Maybe he’s seen a realtor looking around, other realtors, potential buyers, who knows. Their house has been a beehive of activity, there’s been a lot to see. Then he sees Shane come home.”

“Jenny’s been out all day, at Shane’s photo studio, editing her tribute video until the last minute. Shane picked up three videos for her from Fedex.”

“Right. So Shane comes home, she’s just met Molly, she’s pissed about her coat and Molly’s letter in it. Can he tell that she’s pissed?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Carmen said. “Shane might wear her heart on her sleeve, like I do, but that doesn’t mean she’s all that transparent. Remember, she internalizes anger, she swallows it, she doesn’t express it. And I don’t know that she’s pissed just yet, anyway. She’s been told Molly delivered her coat and a letter, and she sort of knows what the letter says. She thinks Jenny did something with it, but she isn’t sure, but by god she’s going to search for it. But I don’t think any of that is evident on her face, walking from her truck in the driveway into the back door of the house. That’s just not Shane.”

“Okay, good. Shane comes home. She searches, and after what, fifteen minutes, half an hour, she finds the negatives and the letter in the attic. Meanwhile, next door, Bette and Tina are running around getting ready for the party.”

“Yes, that would be evident from here.”

“Shane comes out, goes to Tina’s house, brings Tina back, they go in. He sees that.”

“Yes, but I don’t think it means anything. For all he knows they’re going to get trays of hors d’oeuvres from Shane’s refrigerator,” Carmen said.

“What about when they come out?”

“That’s a better question. We should ask Shane to describe that moment. Then we’d know what he saw. Maybe they just walked back to Tina and Bette’s house.”

Lauren sighed. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere.”

“Not to rain on your parade, but there’s something I haven’t told you, and it has me scared shitless.”

Lauren unconsciously placed her hand on her holster.

“Hey, take it easy,” Carmen said, seeing the look on Lauren’s face. “That’s not what I mean. Here it is. Ever since I climbed up here and sat down in this chair, I’ve been aware of something. It made me think, and ask the questions I did.”

“Point?” Lauren asked.

“Lauren, there’s something in the pocket of this arm rest. It looks like maybe a bottle. A babyfood jar, maybe.”

“Oh, shit,” Lauren whispered. “Don’t tell me you touched it.”

“Hell, no,” Carmen said. “That’s what scared me shitless. I don’t want to touch it, if it’s what I think it is. If it’s his.”

Lauren reached into a pocket of her leather Dani Reese-wannabe jacket and brought out a pair of latex gloves. “Don’t move,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Carmen said.

Lauren came around the weightlifting bench to the right side of chair sitting on it and looked at the pocket on the arm rest. Carmen leaned left, to give Lauren room. “I’ll be damned,” Lauren whispered.

“Uh huh,” Carmen whispered back.

“Captain Scofield, do you know anything about a jar in this soda can pocket?”

“No, nothing,” Scofield said. “We haven’t used those chairs in a couple of years.”

“Okay, before I do anything else I need to take some photos. Everybody stay where you are.” Lauren used her cell phone to take a photo of Carmen sitting on the beach chair on top of the weightlifting bench. Then she took a photo of the top of the armrest, showing the lid of the jar. Then she turned around and took a photo of the other folding beach chair in its bag. “This is covered in cobwebs,” Lauren said. “Carmen, was your chair covered in cobwebs when you opened it up?”

“Yes, a few,” Carmen said. “I brushed them off. Is that a problem?”

“No. The cobwebs are good, and it confirms for us what Captain Scofield just said, that they haven’t used the chairs for a few years. Captain, you and your wife have to go to the beach or the mountains more often.”

“Tell me about it,” Scofield said.

Lauren put her fingers under the pocket underneath the armrest and carefully pushed upward. A small jar rose slowly out of the pocket. It had a black lid on it. Lauren had a manila evidence envelope in her left hand. She stopped.

“You have evidence bags in your jacket pocket?” Carmen asked.

“Carmen, I’m a cop,” Lauren said.

“Oh. Right.” Lauren seemed to be concentrating. “What’s the matter?” Carmen asked.

“I don’t want to smudge any fingerprints. Just trying to figure out the best way to do that.”

“The chair’s light. I can stand up and slowly turn it upside down while you hold the envelope under the armrest. We can drop the jar into the envelope. Can you see what’s inside it?”

“No. Looks like a mustard jar.”

“Grey Poupon?”

“No. Maille Old Style, but it’s a Dijon. Be careful. Move very, very slowly. I don’t want to drop it on the floor.”

“Yeah, Maille Old Style, that’s the kind of mustard we like. I probably had some nuts or bolts or screws in it.”

Carefully Carmen stood up, turned, picked up the chair and began to turn it upside down. The jar was already halfway out of the pocket, and Lauren had her manila envelope around the top of it.

“Easy,” Lauren breathed. As gently as a baby, the jar came all the way out of the pocket and into the envelope.

Carmen sat the chair back down. “Can we look at it?”

Lauren carefully maneuvered the jar inside the envelope so they could see into it.

Cigarette butts, and their ash. No mustard.

* * *

Lauren’s cell phone chirped. “Hey, Shane,” she said. “I’m gonna put you on speaker. Carmen’s here.”

“We’re are you guys? I’m in the conference room and you guys aren’t here.”

“And a cheery good morning to you, too,” Carmen said.

“Oh. Sorry. Good morning,” Shane said. She even sounded a little sorry.

“Good morning,” Lauren said, feeling she should jump in before this got out of hand. “As a matter of fact, we’re in the garage behind your old house, where the Creep hung out.”

“Yeah? What are you doing there? You find anything? Oh, wait. Marybeth just put her head in. No, she’s here.”

They heard Marybeth say from a few feet away, “Is that them? I need to talk to Lauren.” Then they heard Shane say, “Here.”

Marybeth came on the line.

“Where are you?” Marybeth asked.

“Carmen and I are in the garage behind Shane and Jenny’s house. We found something. Something big.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Can Shane hear?”

“No.”

“We found cigarette butts. We think there’s DNA of the killer on them. Maybe fingerprints on the jar they were in, too. Keep your poker face on so Shane doesn’t react. We think it’s Shane’s father.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Marybeth said, “Okay, sure, Yeah. No problem. You guys coming in soon?”

“Yes, we’re leaving here in a minute, coming straight in. Marybeth, there’s something else.”

“Yes?”

“Is there any way Jack could be there when we report in?”

Marybeth took a moment to process it. “What have you got? She asked.

“Can you go on speaker phone? Shane might want to hear this. I don’t want her to think we’re keeping secrets.” Even though they were.

After a moment Marybeth said. “Okay, you’re on speaker. Shane’s here. What have you got?”

Lauren wanted to speak directly to Shane. “Hey, Shane.”

“Hey, Lauren. What’s up?”

“Remember Jenny said she decided not to hire a private detective?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“She lied. She did hire a private detective. We found out who it was. And here’s the thing. He’s dead. Down in Mexico, along with the Mexican fishing boat captain he went out with. Carmen and I think it’s connected.”

“Jesus,” Shane murmured.

“I’ll call Jack,” Marybeth said. “You’re right, he needs to hear this. I don’t know his schedule, but I’ll do what I can. Get your asses in here as soon as you can.”

They were going to have to tell Jack two murders had become four.


	27. Match

The Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center was an unremarkable white, five-story office building at the corner of State University Drive and Paseo Rancho Pastilla, just off the El Monte Busway plus the San Bernardino Freeway and the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Freeway, otherwise just known as the I-10. It was east of Chinatown, south of Pasadena, west of El Monte and north of East LA. It was only seven miles from Shane and Jenny’s house. Lauren took the 101 to the 10 to get there.

The facility housed the LAPD’s Forensic Science Division and Cal State LA’s Criminalistics Program as well as the LASD’s crime lab. The facility was surrounded by a tall red brick wall and on the University Drive side it said “California State University Los Angeles” in huge brushed metal letters. Ivy covered some of the walls. Carmen thought Lauren was heading back to her headquarters when she took the Eastern Avenue exit instead.

“Where we going?” Carmen asked. “I thought Marybeth wanted us back ASAP?”

“She did, but I want to drop this jar off at the Scientific Services Bureau. Crime lab to you.”

“Can’t you drop it off at your own building?”

“Yes, but it would a couple days just to get from there to here, and I’m in a hurry.”

“Isn’t it, like, only a mile away?”

“Yep. Welcome to the real world. Evidence travels from one facility to another at the speed of about a third of a mile a day, unless you hand-deliver it. And anyway, I know some people here, and I want to try to get it expedited.” Lauren pulled into the parking area behind the building. “If you stay in the car I can leave it running,” Lauren said, “and that’ll keep the A/C running.”

“Got it,” Carmen said.

“I’ll hurry,” Lauren said, jumping out and taking her evidence envelope into the building with her. She blew Carmen a kiss.

Carmen sat in Lauren’s car and checked her e-mail on her cell phone. She wondered if Lauren was a good kisser. She’d bet serious pesos and her mother’s chimichanga recipe on it.

When they got back to the office Lauren led them directly to Marybeth’s office. “Hey,” she said.

Marybeth looked up from her paperwork, glanced at her wristwatch, picked up her phone and punched in a number. “I’ve got Jack on standby, and he’s got an ADA he wants briefed.”

“We’re nowhere near ready for that,” Lauren said.

“I know,” Marybeth said, “but it won’t hurt anything. They just want to know what’s coming down the pike at them. According to you guys, we’re now looking at four murders. I can’t blame them for wanting into the loop.”

“Okay, I guess I see their point of view. When are—“

“Jack?” Marybeth said into the phone. “They’re here. Ready to rock and roll? Okay.” She hung up the phone. “Conference room, five minutes. Go pee, get coffee.”

“Shane here?”

“Yes, she’s been here all morning. She asked me what she could do. I told her to read through the files again, see if anything popped out. She seemed skeptical, but I told her it wasn’t busywork, that sometimes on the ninth or tenth pass all of a sudden you see something you didn’t see before. You’ve got four minutes now.”

Carmen and Lauren hustled to the woman’s bathroom then the break room for coffee. By the time they got to the conference room Marybeth, Jack and a tall woman in her fifties had joined Shane around the table.

“Carmen,” Marybeth said, “I think you’re the only one who hasn’t met Jack, who was Lauren and my old boss in the homicide division, and this is LA County Assistant District Attorney Deirdre Collins.”

Deirdre stood and leaned over the table to shake hands; Carmen leaned over, too.

“Heard a lot about you,” Deirdre said.

“Good, I hope?” Carmen asked.

“Oh, yes. And your mother’s cooking came up a couple of times.”

“Shane and I spent some time this morning bringing Deirdre and Jack up to speed,” Marybeth said.

“And mom’s cooking came up?”

“That was me,” Shane said quietly.

Carmen looked at her, thought about what to say, then decided to drop it.

“Sit. Talk,” Marybeth said.

They did. “First things first,” Lauren said. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I came in here early. I’d been thinking about Niki’s testimony that she and Jenny had talked about hiring a private detective to find out who was blackmailing them.”

It took Lauren half an hour to describe her early morning search for Jenny’s credit card payment to Spade and Archer, and then her early morning phone call to Carmen (minus the juicy parts and the sex banter), Carmen’s theory about the Creep being a smoker, and their visit to the Scofield’s home, a.k.a. the Creep House, behind Shane and Jenny’s place, and Carmen finding the cigarette butts in the jar in the camping chair arm rest pocket. Deirdre and Jack took notes on legal pads.

“I dropped it off at the crime lab on our way in,” Lauren said. “I asked for fingerprints and of course DNA.”

“Did they give you any hope for a quick turn-around? Marybeth asked.

“My friend at the lab thought they could have something in two or three days.”

“Today’s Friday. Does three days mean Monday, or next Wednesday?”

Lauren seemed to blush, Carmen thought.

“I didn’t think to ask,” Lauren said. “I was so happy they’d expedite it I didn’t want to push my luck.”

Just then a face appeared at the door. It was Richard, the older civilian Shane and Carmen had met the first time they visited Marybeth. They’d become well acquainted with him since then.

“Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant,” he said. “We got a small emergency downstairs. Could Miss McCutcheon come down?”

Shane sat bolt upright. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing real serious,” Richard said. “One of the cruisers, he was pulling out kind fast, and he tapped your bumper. He don’t think he did any damage, but he needs you to look. And your alarm went off, you know, and it’s making a racket in the parking lot.”

“Oh, shit,” Shane muttered. “I’ll be back soon as I can.” She followed Richard down the corridor to the elevator.

Everyone stayed silent until they were sure Shane was gone.

“You guys set that up,” Carmen said.

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Marybeth said in a way that made everyone grin.

“She’ll know,” Carmen said. “Five bucks on it.”

“You think? Okay, I’ll play,” Lauren said. “Five bucks.” They fist-bumped.

Deirdre ignored them. “Lauren said you think it could be Shane’s father. We need to talk about that. Lauren, what have you got?”

“Gabriel McCutcheon, age about 53 or thereabouts. Last known address about six or seven years ago was Oregon. This theory is only a few hours old, and I haven’t had time to plug his name into any data banks, so I have nothing official. Ask me again in two hours. As for the rest, I’ll let Carmen tell you about him. She actually met him, once.”

“We have to credit Marybeth with an assist,” Carmen began. “Something she said gave me the idea. She said blackmailers and extortionists are predators like sharks that return time and again to their favorite feeding grounds. That got me thinking about Gabe McCutcheon, because he was a predator who struck the group once before. I thought, what if he’s back for a second bite? A much bigger bite, at that.”

It took Carmen 10 minutes to tell Jack, Deirdre and Marybeth about the aborted wedding in Whistler, and how Gabe had conned Helena out of $10,000. She made no attempt to disguise her own role as Shane’s once-upon-a-time fiancé.

“What happened afterward? To you and Shane, I mean,” Jack asked.

“I moved to San Francisco, jump-started my life over again, and never spoke another word to Shane until a month ago, when she came to see me to start this investigation. The question in your mind is, what is our relationship now. The answer is, there is no relationship, and never will be ever again. She’s my ex, that’s all. Just think of it as a bad marriage that never actually happened.”

“I’ve got two that did,” Jack said. Everyone smiled.

“So then you know,” Carmen said.

“I understand you also had a relationship with Jenny before she was murdered.”

“About four years before, and only for a month or two,” Carmen said. “Nothing serious. We weren’t in love or anything, if that explains anything.”

“I’m curious about your motives in this,” Deirdre said, looking her straight in the eye.

“Jenny was my friend. Alice is still my friend. One got murdered. The other one is in jail for something she didn’t do. I guess my motive is pretty simple. Catch the real killer of my friend, get my other friend out of jail. Nothing more complicated than that.”

“Fair enough,” Deirdre said. “What about Shane?”

“Same thing. Jenny was her friend and lover. Alice was her oldest and best friend, even more than Jenny. They were never lovers, if that tells you anything, which it doesn’t. But Shane was even closer to both of them than I was, so she has the same motivation I do, but even more so. I guess that’s one of the few things Shane and I completely agree on. Our mutual friend and mutual ex-girlfriend was murdered, and our mutual, current, non-romantic, non-sexual friend is in jail.”

“But Shane had motive to kill Jenny. You never did, never mind you were out of town when it happened.”

“That’s true,” Carmen said.

“But you’re convinced Shane didn’t kill Jenny.”

“Convinced, and beyond convinced. Dead sure. Positive. Bet my life on it.”

“Why”

“Lots of reasons. One, Shane internalizes anger, she doesn’t lash out at other people. Two, at heart she’s a coward. Three, if she had done it, even accidentally pushed her off the deck, Shane could never have walked down the steps and rolled Jenny into the pool. The first part, sure. The second part, the drowning, no fucking way. That’s just beyond absurd. And then if you still say, what if she had? Then the answer is Shane would have come apart at the seams. Crying and sobbing and carrying on fit to beat the band. Which didn’t happen. She was in the media room watching the movie and eating popcorn. If she left the room to take a piss, she was back in a minute or two. If she left the room for five minutes and killed Jenny in that very brief time slot, there’s just no fucking way on earth she rolls Jenny into the pool, walks back upstairs, sits back down in the media room and watches the goodbye video, eating popcorn, like nothing happened. Just not possible in this world.”

“Okay. Lauren, Marybeth, your thoughts?”

“I absolutely agree,” Lauren said. “Not Shane. No way. Same reasons.”

“I admit I was skeptical for quite a while,” Marybeth said. “But yes, I agree. Not Shane.”

“Then my next question is obvious. Does Shane suspect her father? Even if she had nothing to do with Jenny’s murder, does she know he’s the blackmailer? Does she think he’s the stalker? What do you call him, the Creep? Does she think it’s Gabe?”

“No, again, absolutely not. She’s clueless. If it’s Gabe, she has no idea,” Carmen said.

“I agree,” Lauren said.

“Okay, I have to say something now you guys really aren’t gonna like, but here it is,” Deirdre said. “I’m really worried about Shane and Carmen’s roles in the investigation. Two civilians running around and taking part in a murder investigation, civilians with connections to the case, which is even worse. I’d be worried to death even if it wasn’t Gabe McCutcheon as the suspect, but now that he is, it’s ten times worse. I’m mildly worried about Carmen, because she was Jenny’s girlfriend at one time. I’m ten times more worried about Shane, who has motive up the wazoo, from what you tell me. By rights she ought to be sequestered a thousand miles away from this investigation.”

“That’s my fault,” Jack said. “I let Marybeth and Lauren run with it.”

“That doesn’t bother me, Jack,” Deirdre said. “They are both crackerjack detectives with murder investigation experience. The thing is, because they are working with Shane and Carmen they’ve broken wide open a closed homicide case into three additional murders we never knew about. That’s pretty impressive. If we ever get to trial with Gabe McCutcheon, or anybody else, the trial is going to be a prosecutor’s nightmare. But at least we’ll have a defendant, and we’ll be able to close out four murders.”

“That we know of,” Lauren said.

“You think there’s more?”

“I have no idea. All I know is, we started with one. Now we’re at four. Who knows what tomorrow brings?”

“Point taken,” Deirdre said. “All I’m saying is, if and when we ever get to court, your participation is going to be a problem, but we’ll just have to handle it. All right, how do we deal with Shane as of this moment? She could be back any second.”

“We say nothing,” Marybeth said. “Lauren works on tracking down Gabe without telling Shane. Otherwise, Shane can stay in the loop. You guys have plenty of other stuff to work on, and anyway it’s Friday. You can take the weekend off, and hopefully we’ll get the DNA results back on Monday or Tuesday. That’ll tell us where to go from there. In the meantime, you have a lot of work to do on the private detective who went missing in Mexico, and Shane’s free to concentrate on that. Jack?”

“I’m good, Marybeth, Carry on. And hey, Lauren and Carmen, well done,” Jack said.

“Thanks,” Lauren said. Carmen blushed.

Just then Shane opened the conference room door and came in and sat down.

“Shane, everything okay?” Marybeth asked.

“Yeah, one of the patrol cars backed into my truck. I had to fill out a lot of paperwork saying there was no damage, I wasn’t gonna sue the county. A lot of bullshit and paperwork. I know you guys were talking about me. Carmen and Lauren told you I didn’t do it.”

Carmen held out her hand toward Lauren, palm up. Lauren reached into her pants pocket, fished out a five-dollar bill, and laid it in Carmen’s palm.

Deirdre was quick on her feet, steering the conversation where she wanted. “Do you have a theory of the case?” she asked, mostly at Lauren but including Shane and Carmen.

“We do,” Lauren said. “Here it is. Jenny and Niki Stevens were being jointly blackmailed by someone we now call the Creep, who had been surveilling them for some extended period of time, and videotaping them having sex. They had each made five monthly payments, each one under the $10,000 bank notice thing--”

“Structuring,” Deirdre said.

“Yes,” Lauren said. She saw the looks of mystification on Carmen and Shane’s faces. “’Structuring’ is the legal term for the crime of making a financial transaction just under the ten-thousand-dollar reporting threshold. Over ten thousand, and if it looks funny, the bank files an SAR, a suspicious activity report. Yes, they were structuring to avoid the SARs. Before the sixth monthly payment, Jenny apparently decided enough was enough, and hired a private detective without telling Niki, probably to find out who the blackmailer was, or otherwise do something about it, make a final settlement, get the blackmail videos back, or whatever. Maybe he finds something, we don’t yet know. The Creep is watching Jenny and Shane’s house, and on the night of the farewell party next door at Bette and Tina’s, the Creep leaves his surveillance post in Scofield’s garage, comes into Bette and Tina’s backyard, meets Jenny on or near the stairs or the deck, gets into an argument, and pushes her off the deck. Our theory is he did not premeditate homicide. But once she’s lying down below by the pool, he has to do something so she won’t identify him, so he rolls her into the pool. That’s when a possible assault turns into a definite homicide, not the push off the deck. He leaves the scene the same way he came, a gap in the fence behind Scofield’s garage. He goes into Scofield’s garage, quickly folds and puts the camp chair back in its place, returns the weightlifting bench to its position, and gets the hell out of there before anyone discovers Jenny’s body in the pool and the shit hits the fan. Police arrive, Marybeth starts her investigation. Within a few hours, Alice falsely confesses, believing she is shielding Shane, who she thinks is the murderer. The false confession stops the investigation in its tracks, except for the forensics and autopsy, and not much further ever gets done. No other suspects are explored, no other leads or possibilities followed or even developed. Niki lies, so the blackmail is never discovered.”

“Now,” Lauren said, “this next part is really just spit-balling, because we’ve had no time to work on it. The private eye Jenny hired, Henry Hooker, goes on vacation to Ensenada, where he likes to go sport fishing for marlin. He has his favorite charter boat captain, a local Mexican fellow, and they go out one day about a week after the murder, and they never come back. Among the many questions we don’t know is, did Hooker know about Jenny’s murder? My guess is no, or he’d have volunteered it to us, unless he instead had decided to blackmail the blackmailer who is now a murderer. But I really don’t think that’s it. I think Hooker simply didn’t know. I’m guessing he went to Mexico even before the murder occurred. But I also think he found something, and told Jenny before he went on vacation, like he was tasked to do. Maybe he had identified the blackmailer. Maybe they were in negotiations. In any case, we think the Creep went down to Mexico and took care of Henry Hooker, and the boat captain was collateral damage. He probably found a way to scuttle the boat, because neither it nor the two men have ever been seen again. We think they are out there somewhere off Ensenada at the bottom of the Pacific, and that was two years ago, so even if we ever found the boat, the bodies are gone by now.”

“Then eight months go by,” Lauren said, “and somehow, some way, Max makes contact with the Creep, or the other way around.”

“She was one of the women at the farewell party?” Deirdre asked.

“He,” Carman and Shane both said, quietly but simultaneously. “Max was a transman,” Carmen said.

“Right,” Deirdre said. “Sorry. He was at the party.”

“Yes,” Lauren said. “And also one of Jenny’s ex-lovers several years earlier. Anyway, we think that at some point well after Jenny’s murder, Max and the Creep have some kind of contact. Max was living and working out in Bakersfield. One night after work at a computer repair shop he was lured out onto the highway somewhere, was forced to get drunk and take some oxycodone, and was deliberately run down in a way that made it look, superficially, like an accident, at least at first blush. In a way, that’s a common theme that runs through all four homicides: They each were made to look like accidents, at least for a little while. And for two of the four, Hooker and the boat captain, we‘re really just guessing until we look at it further.”

“The other pattern you have is lack of clear, unambiguous motive,” Deirdre said.

“That’s true,” Lauren said. “We concede that. We have guesses, but that’s all they are.”

“Deirdre,” Marybeth put in, “in fairness to Lauren and Charlie’s Angels, we’ve only known about two of the four deaths for a few hours, and only about Max for a week or so. It’s still very early days yet.”

“I understand,” Deirdre said. “I’m not criticizing. I’m only summarizing what you know.”

“Okay,” Marybeth said.

“I guess that’s all I need for now,” Deirdre said.

“Jack, you have anything?” Marybeth asked him.

“No, I’m good, Marybeth,” he said. “Lauren, at the risk of Marybeth kicking me out of her office, if you ever want to transfer back to homicide, you let me know. And I’m serious as a coronary about this next part. You’re looking at what may be a serial killer, with four murders under his belt. Maybe more. At some point you’re going to going to be at crunch time. Do NOT, I repeat NOT, hesitate to call in backup. Hit the button. And you have a secondary responsibility, which is keeping these two civilians out of harm’s way. It’s bad enough I have to deal with Marybeth. I don’t want Bosley and Charley and all the other Angels all over my ass.”

“I hear you, Jack,” Lauren grinned. “Say, if I come back to homicide, can I get a raise? Nights and weekends off?”

“Absolutely,” Jack said. “Work 9 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m., beat the rush hour traffic, take two hours for lunch. I’ll give you a corner office, windows on two walls.”

“Deirdre, take this psychopath out of my office,” Marybeth said. Everyone laughed, and Jack and Deirdre stood up to go.

Jack stopped in front of Shane and Carmen. He wasn’t smiling. “You two have done good. But listen, if Lauren tells you to back away, run away, you do what she says, not even immediately but even sooner than that. You’re civilians, you have no badges, no guns, no training. Either of you own a gun? Carry one? Got a carry permit? No, I didn’t think so. Anything happens to either of you, it’s Lauren’s ass, Marybeth’s ass, and my ass, and of the three, mine’s the prettiest. We on the same page? I need you to make affirmative noises.”

“Same page, yessir,” Shane said.

“Do I have to agree to the part about the prettiest ass?” Carmen asked.

“You betcha,” Jack said, turning to go. “Marybeth, keep us posted,” he said over his shoulder as he went down the hall.

“What’s wrong with my ass?” Deirdre asked herself. “Later, Marybeth,” she said, walking down the hall.

* * *

“Lauren, kick the door shut, please. Thanks,” Marybeth said. “Shane, spit it out. I can see from the look on your face you’re pissed. I’m sorry. They had questions about you, and you didn’t need to be in the room. They didn’t want you in the room. It’s as simple as that. If you want to blame someone, blame me. Lauren and Carmen didn’t know about it.”

“I’ll get over it,” Shane said, “and yeah, I figured they didn’t know. I’m not even mad at you. I guess I just get tired being a suspect. And I feel like a fifth wheel, like I’m a drag on the investigation. Like I’m not pulling my weight.”

“Okay, I understand,” Marybeth said. She glanced at Lauren and Carmen. “You guys just shut up. I got this.” She paused, getting Shane’s full attention.

This ought to be good, Carmen thought.

“First, Shane, knock off the self-pity shit. The mere existence of this investigation is solely and completely because of you. It was you who roped in Carmen, and both of you who roped in me. And because of that we’ve re-opened Jenny’s murder case, we’re going to get Alice out of jail, we now have Max’s murder to work on, which none of us even knew about, and we probably have two more murders in Mexico we didn’t know about. And finally, in a couple of days we may very well have the killer’s DNA and, god willing, maybe even a fingerprint. We have exposed and documented a major blackmail scheme no one else but Niki -- no one else alive, anyway -- knew about. And she’d have never come clean about it if it weren’t for this investigation. Shane, about ninety-nine point ninety-eight percent of that is on your shoulders. And since you and Carmen both know the same batch of major players, you have just as much insight into the people and personalities as she does. So, please, try to spare us the self-pity, okay? We are a long, long way from finishing this thing, and you have just as much valuable input as anyone else.”

And you’re about to have a helluva lot more if the DNA comes back as Gabe’s, Lauren, Carmen and Marybeth all thought to themselves, but couldn’t say.

“Okay,” Shane said. “Thanks. I’m sorry if I was Debbie Downer.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marybeth said. She glanced at her watch. “It’s lunchtime, and it’s Friday. I think you guys should go out, have a nice, long, maybe liquid lunch somewhere, maybe somewhere the waves are lapping at the shoreline, and not come back to work until Monday morning. You’ve been working long hours, no thanks to Lauren waking you people up at four or five o’clock in the morning. Lauren and Carmen have already worked a seven-hour day and its only lunchtime. You guys have weekend plans?”

“I’m DJing a _quincinera_ tomorrow,” Carmen said. “It’s the daughter of my oldest sister’s best friend. It’s been on my calendar, I swear I’m not kidding, for a year. We checked my cruise calendar eight or ten months ago to make sure I was gonna be available. I should start prepping for it.”

“Shane?”

“I’ve got a cocktail party thing tonight I have to go to, and two events tomorrow, and one Sunday afternoon,” Shane said.

“Jesus,” Marybeth said. “You guys are workaholics. I though us cops were bad. I thought EYE was bad. Okay, I’m changing my previous suggestion that you get out of here to an outright order. You, too, Lauren. Go on, beat feet. Try to get some food, drink, sex, rest, and sunshine, not necessarily in that order. See you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Monday morning. Go. Go.”

When they left Marybeth took out a rubber glove, carefully removed from the trash can the bottle of water Shane had been drinking from, put it in an evidence bag, filled out the request for DNA from saliva traces under the cap, and gave it to one of her people to rush it to the crime lab immediately. They’d need Shane’s DNA to test paternity against any DNA on the cigarette butts they’d found in Scofield’s garage.

* * *

They went to the conference room to straighten up their things and depart for the weekend. Shane finished first, and hung around by the door. “I’ll walk out with you,” she said.

Carmen’s face showed the tiniest flash of annoyance, and of course Shane, of all people, saw it.

“Uh, I wanted to talk to Lauren for a second,” Carmen said. “I’ll be right with you.” It was now her turn to see a look of annoyance on Shane’s face. “And no, it wasn’t to talk about you. It has nothing to do with you.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

“Then no, we’re not sleeping together.”

“Hey, guys, don’t do this,” Lauren said quietly. “I can hear you, you know. I’m in the room.”

“Shane, I was going to ask Lauren if she wanted to come over for dinner tonight. The _quincinera_ is tomorrow and Mom is having about nine hundred people over for dinner tonight. Some friends and relatives from out of town. I thought Lauren might like to meet some of them, and they’d like to meet Lauren. It’s as simple as that. I just didn’t want to have that conversation in front of you. I’d invite you, too, but, you know. Mom would shoot you on the spot. So would ten or fifteen of my relatives and in-laws. Okay? You happy now?” She spun to Lauren. “Would you like to come for dinner? There’s gonna be a bunch of people. They’d like to meet you. And of course, there’s always Mom’s cooking.”

Lauren looked from Carmen to Shane and back to Carmen. Shane turned away abruptly and walked down the hall toward the elevator. “See you Monday,” said over her shoulder.

“Well, that was awkward,” Lauren said.

Carmen said nothing, staring at the tabletop in front of her. She was biting her lip.

“What time?” Lauren asked.

Carmen looked up, and let a moment go by. “Six.”

“Okay. Can I bring anything?”

“To my Mom’s house? Salad, dessert, wine? Is that what you mean?” She was laughing now, finally. Lauren grinned. “We have enough food and drink on hand to feed half the barrio. You can bring Pepto and your strap-on, if you want. Other than that, Mom’s got it covered.”

Lauren smiled and nodded. The smile faded.

“What?” Carmen asked.

“Shane thinks we’re sleeping together,” Lauren said.

“I know. So what?”

Lauren shrugged. “I don’t know. So nothing, I guess.”

“I also wanted to ask you if you wanted to come to the _quincinera_. Have you ever been to one? I thought it might be an interesting cultural experience for you if you’ve never been to one. There’ll be a ton of food, partying, and I hear they’ve got the hottest, smokin’ DJ this side of the Mississippi. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“Don’t you think it might be a little awkward? You bringing someone home to meet the family?”

“I know. And it worked out so well last time I did that. Seriously, no one will think anything. You’ve already met half of them, and most of them know about the investigation. But hey, if you don’t want to, that’s okay, too. No pressure.”

“Won’t they be uncomfortable with a police officer on the premises? Even off duty?”

“Only if you’re wearing your gun and a flak jacket. You’d leave them in the car, right? Anyway, there will be two Marines and an assistant Orange County DA there. She’s the _quincinera_ girl’s aunt, I think, I’m not sure. But no, it won’t matter to anybody.”

Lauren thought it over. “Okay, what time? When and where?”

Carmen told her. “You heading out now?” she asked. “Marybeth told us to get the hell outa Dodge.”

“I know. But I have a couple things I have to do. I need to put Gabe McCutcheon into the system, put out a BOLO, do a search, all that kinda good stuff. I couldn’t sleep a wink if I left it all wait until Monday. I also want to open up communications with whoever we need to talk to down in Ensenada. They may have an open missing persons lost-at-sea case they don’t know could be a double homicide.”

“Sounds like you could be here until midnight.”

“Oh, no. I’ll be out of here in time to go home, shower, put a couple drops of seductive perfume behind my shell-like ears, strap on my strap-on and be at your mom’s house by ten of six. Remember, I’m motivated to be there.”

Carmen laughed. “Wow, I guess you are! What are you wearing, your snow white Don Johnson blazer with the purple T-shirt, or the pale, pale robin’s egg blue Don John blazer with the puce T-shirt?”

“Am I really that predictable? I must be in a rut. No, I was thinking of letting my freak flag fly a little. I was thinking about coming naked except for my strap-on under my Clint Eastwood Good-Bad-Ugly serape. What do you recommend, flip-flops or fuck-me pumps?”

Carmen closed her eyes, savoring the vision.

“Too much of a fashion statement?” Lauren asked.

“Not for me,” Carmen said. “I have to run home now and take a very, very cold, longer-than-usual shower. See you at six. Bye!”

* * *

Carmen’s phone rang a few minutes after 11 on Sunday night. “‘Lo?”

“Hey, Car, it’s Lauren. Did I wake you?”

“Uh, not quite. I was in bed, lights out, just about to go to sleep after having sex.”

“Oh. Hope it was good.” Lauren didn’t know if Carmen was kidding or not.

“The best word might be ‘workmanlike.’ Or perhaps, ‘adequate.’”

“Not up to your usual standards. Anybody I know?”

“My fuck buddy, Mr. Hitachi.”

“I’ve heard of him. He gets around, although I missed him at the _quincinera_. How was he?”

“Like most actual men. Quick, efficient. Emotionally unavailable. No foreplay. Like I said, adequate. Unlike a real guy, he never gets soft and I have to manually turn him off. Then he rolls over and goes to sleep.”

“They should invent one of those things that gets you off and then cuddles for half an hour. They could make it talk to you, like Siri and Alexa. 'Wow, that was amazing. You're incredible. And did you like the flowers I had special-delivered to your office?’”

“It would sell faster than the new iPhone. I’d get one, the lesbian version.”

“Me, too.”

“Since we’re sexually bantering, I take it this phone call wasn’t an emergency?”

“No, no emergency. But I just got some news, and I couldn’t wait until morning, I had to call you.”

“The DNA results came back.”

“Yep. And we have a match.”

“Oh, my god,” Carmen whispered.

Gabe McCutcheon had killed Jenny. Max, too. Carmen knew in her bones it was true.

“Can we use it in court?”

“No. It’s just some cigarette butts, and we can’t even date when they were dropped into the jar. The DNA match isn’t even good enough for a case where we can establish time and location very well. They think they’re maybe two years old, but even that’s not clear.”

“Do they know what kind of cigarette?”

“Marlboro.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, just about the most common kind there is. Do we know what Gabe McCutcheon smoked?”

“I don’t. Maybe Shane might. The night before the wedding fiasco, he and Shane went out for a drink, and they would have lit up. But we have to think about how we ask her, and how we tell her what we’ve found.”

“Yep.”

There was silence.

“What are you thinking?” Lauren asked.

“I thought you were going to ask me what I’m wearing.”

“I know what you’re wearing. I’m trying hard not to think about it.”

“Uh-huh, I bet. Well, what I’m wearing and what I’m thinking are just about the same: Not much of anything. I want to process it all. Gabe killed Jenny and Max, he was the blackmailer, but we can’t prove it."

“Not yet we can’t, but we will. First we have to find him.”

“Shane might be able to help with that, too.”

“Think so? She’d help get her father arrested?”

“For murdering her best friend and lover? Fucking A she would. And for a lot more besides that. Conning ten grand from Helena. Fucking up our wedding. Dumping her brother on her, then yanking him back. For being a general asshole. You bet she would.”

“Good, good. One other thing. I just wanted to tell you the _quincinera_ was fun, and thanks for inviting me. Friday night dinner, too.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Glad you had a good time.”

“Anybody say anything about me? You and me, I mean? Maybe I’m paranoid, but I got the impression a few people were sizing me up. Is she or isn’t she.”

“Yeah, they probably were. Everybody knows I’m out, way, way out, now, ever since the wedding thein went south. Since then, I could help a ninety-nine year old widow in a wheel chair across the street, and half the barrio would wonder, ‘Hmm. I wonder if Carmen’s doing her.’”

Lauren laughed.

“My sister caught my eye, nodded her head at you, and raised her eyebrow. That means, ‘Well, are you?’ And I laughed at her and shook my head no. Then she made a sorrowful, sad, crying, face. So it was an entirely wordless conversation that only sisters can have. Later I was dancing with my brother-in-law, and he said, out of the clear blue sky, ‘I don’t know if you are, but I would, in a heartbeat.’ I said, ‘Pablo, what are you talking about?’ But I knew, and he knew, so I said, ‘Hey, take your best shot at her.’”

“Oh, thanks.”

“He never would. For one thing, he still loves Patricia like a teenager, and anyway she’d cut his balls off, and he knows it. It was all just kidding each other.”

“I figured.”

“But now that you mention it only two or three times, remind me why we aren’t sleeping together?”

“Oh, that. It’s because I am a highly professional law enforcement officer conducting a serious murder investigation, and Marybeth and Jack and the ADA would have my ass on a platter, and not in a good way. Kind of like when you are off being Julie on the Love Boat and management doesn’t want you fucking passengers. I mean, you yourself told me that. Well, my management doesn’t want me fucking people I’m working a case with. Or suspects, either, not that you are one.”

“Good to know,” Carmen said. “I was worried it was something really serious, like maybe you aren’t attracted to women with three tits.”

“You have three tits? I never noticed.”

“I don’t like to brag. Was there anything else?”

“I could also mention that I live in Los Angeles and you live in San Francisco, which is only slightly closer than your other heart-throb who lives in San Diego, and living 400 miles apart makes Date Night problematic. I think you’re the one who told me that. And you’re at sea eight or nine months in a row, and I work nights and weekends and irregular but very long hours, and neither one of us could go that long. Well, I could, because, you know, I am a Woman of Steely Discipline. And if we got it on, you would fall hopelessly in love with me, and when you’re at sea like the Ancient Mariner you would pine for me and neglect your work, and who wants a cruise director and DJ who has a poor attitude, is all mopey and distracted and feeling sorry for herself, and quite possibly even suicidal from acute, chronic, unrequited horniness. They probably would have to fire you. I know I would.”

“I understand completely,” Carmen said. “You don’t want me to jeopardize my job. You’re only thinking of what’s best for me.”

“Exactly.”

“So it’s nothing personal.”

“Well, I don’t much like your mom’s cooking. I don’t want that to come between us.”

“You are such a liar.”

“I know! I think the reason you caught on was I’m not very good at it. It’s the same reason I don’t beat confessions out of suspects. I punch ‘em and then I run to get some band-aids and a bag of ice to put on the bruise. In the police academy, I failed Good Cop/Bad Cop and had to go to summer school. What gave me away?”

“I saw you eat three helpings of her Achiote-seared gambas with habanero pickled onions and then lick the plate.”

“Dead give-away, huh?”

“That part about being a highly professional law enforcement officer was good. I very nearly bought about five percent of it.”

“I didn’t know you were that gullible. By the way, the _quincinera_ was the first time I caught your DJ persona. You were fantastic. I see now why you were the hottest, smokin’est DJ that LA ever saw. LA’s loss is San Francisco’s gain. The cruise line, too.”

“Oh, now you’re gonna make me blush.”

“I wish. How long have you been DJing?”

“Since right after high school. It’s a long and sordid story. Maybe I’ll tell you some time.”

“Sordid? Oh, god, I wish you hadn’t told me that part. Now I can’t wait.”

Carmen laughed, and started singing the Carly Simon song, “Anticipation ... is making me waiting... .”

“Oh, you bitch. Okay, I’ll let you go back to your sex orgy. Mr. Hitachi has had time to rest up. Maybe he’s ready for a second round.”

“Very funny.”

“Hey, Car?”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to say, you’re the one who broke this. Most of the good ideas and leads were yours.”

“Uh, no, I … uh…”

“No. This was mostly all you. I know it, Marybeth knows it. She was right Friday when she said it was all Shane who started it. But once it got started, it was you. You did good, kid.”

“Well, thanks, I guess.”

“Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Okay. Hey, what are YOU wearing? You alone, or do you have an appliance nearby? A weaponized Sybian, maybe?”

“A Sybian? I don’t need a steenkin’ Sybian. Piper Perabo said she might drop over tonight, so I put it in the closet.”

“Bitch,” Carmen said. “Now you’re making me both horny AND jealous.” She heard Lauren’s quiet laugh as the phone call disconnected.

Piper Perabo. Carmen had long had a crush on Piper. Carmen turned Mr. Hitachi back on.

* * *

Carmen and Lauren were sitting in Marybeth’s office at 10 a.m. Monday morning when Shane arrived. Lauren had texted Shane and asked her to meet in Marybeth’s office, because they had news to share. Carmen and Lauren had arrived at 9:30 so the three of them could discuss what they wanted to tell Shane, and how. Marybeth’s door was open, so Shane walked right in.

“Hey, guys,” Shane said. She looked around the room and saw their faces. “What’s wrong?”

“We’ve got some news,” Marybeth said. “Close the door. Come sit down.”

Shane closed Marybeth’s door and sat in the chair between Lauren and Carmen. “I’ve got bad vibes,” she said. “Tell me.”

“We think we know who killed Jenny and Max,” Marybeth said. “There’s no easy way to tell you. We think it was your father.”

Shane looked at Marybeth, her face blank. She said nothing. She was processing. A minute went by, and Marybeth was about to say something, but Carmen made a tiny, almost unnoticeable hand gesture, stop, that both Lauren and Marybeth caught. They said nothing.

A tear ran down Shane’s cheek. “That motherfucker,” she whispered. “Motherfucker. Motherfucker. Motherfucker. I’ll kill him.” She turned toward Carmen. “I will. I’ll fucking kill him.”

“Personally, I’m on board with that,” Carmen said quietly, “but Lauren and Marybeth probably won’t go along.”

“Don’t make jokes,” Shane said.

“You’re right,” Carmen said. “I’m sorry.”

Shane wasn’t crying, although tears streamed down her cheeks. “That motherfucker. He hurt so many people. My mother. Shea. Carla. Helena.” She turned to Carmen again. “You. He fucked up your wedding.”

“Not my wedding. Our wedding. He hurt you, too. Maybe you more than anybody. And he took Shea away.”

“Our wedding,” Shane repeated. “And … you’re telling me he killed Jenny. And Max.”

“Yes,” Carmen said. “We’re pretty sure.”

“Who figured it out?” Shane asked. “It was you, wasn’t it?” she said, again turning to Carmen.

“Shane, we all—” but Shane cut her off.

“It’s okay. I’m not mad. I knew it would be you. Alice even said so. She said, ‘Get Carmen. Carmen will figure it out.’ She said that. And I knew she was right. I didn’t tell you, that night I went to your house in San Francisco. But I knew, if anybody would, it would be you. Alice thought so, too.” She closed her eyes, opened them, took a tissue from a box on Marybeth’s desk, and blotted her eyes and cheeks. “How long have you known?”

Lauren felt the need to jump in. “We got confirmation last night—”

“Last night?” Shane said. “But you knew before that, right? So how long have you known?”

“Shane, we didn’t know, not for sure. But the answer to what you’re asking is, we kind of suspected only about three or four days ago. We got the idea—”

“You got the idea.”

“Okay, I got the idea, and talked it over with Lauren, and we figured out a way to see if we were right. We didn’t want to say anything until we were sure.”

“So now you’re sure? You can prove it?”

“No, we can’t prove it, but yes, we are sure.”

“I don’t understand.”

Lauren didn’t want Carmen to suffer unnecessarily, so she took over.

“Shane, you remember Gladys Wilkinson telling us that the guy who was hanging around the house behind yours was a smoker, and he’d come out of the house to smoke? And you remember one of Jenny’s suspects was somebody either in the group or close to it. Jenny never told you she was being blackmailed, and you were gob-smacked she never told you. But it wasn’t because she didn’t trust you or thought you were the blackmailer. It was because one of the people she suspected might be your father, but she wasn’t sure. She also thought it might be somebody connected to Niki. Remember Niki told us Jenny wanted to hire a private detective, but Niki argued her out of it? Shane, we now know Jenny hired the private detective anyway, in spite of what she told Niki. She lied to Niki, and kept both of you in the dark to protect you until she was sure.”

“Shane, I want to say something,” Marybeth said. She had been quiet so far, letting things develop and unfold. “I told Lauren I wanted this meeting to be in my office when we told you who we think killed Jenny and Max. The reason is that I want to give you my personal promise that the entire Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and Lauren, and me, we will not rest until we find Gabe McCutcheon, arrest him, charge him with the murder of Jenny, your friend and your lover, and of Max, your friend, and try him, convict him, and watch him get life in prison for what he did. Shane, we’re going to get him.” She met Shane’s look with her own determined face.

“Okay,” Shane whispered.

“So don’t kill him first,” Marybeth said. “We’ve got this.”

“Okay,” Shane whispered.

“Good,” Marybeth said. She glanced at her watch. “It’s coffee break time. Everybody pee and re-caffeinate, and be back here in ten minutes. We have work to do.”

After Marybeth and Lauren left the office with their empty coffee cups, Carmen turned to Shane. “You okay?”

“No. Fuck no.”

“That’s not what I mean. I meant … I don’t know what I meant. Maybe I meant, are you mad at me?”

“I don’t know. Should I be?”

“For the last few days we didn’t tell you what was going on. What we were thinking.”

“Jenny never told me what was going on, either.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Welcome to the club. How long do you think she knew? That it was my father?”

“She may have suspected for a month or so. But I think it’s probable she didn’t know it was him for certain until the last day or two, and maybe even the last two or three minutes, right when she met him in the back yard, and he pushed her off the deck.”

“A month,” Shane said. “Even maybe a week.”

“You’re thinking, how could you have not known? You, who are always so good at sensing what other people are thinking or feeling.”

Shane didn’t say anything.

“Shane, you’ve said it yourself a couple of times. For those last few months, when you and Jenny were sleeping together, everything was weird. You even said it was like you yourself were helpless. There was all that shit going on around you. Everybody mad at Jenny, each for her own reasons. Helena and Dylan, that was a train wreck, and Jenny was in the middle of it, stirring up trouble and plotting with Niki. Bette and Tina and the adoption, and planning the move to New York. Alice and Tasha and Jamie, another train wreck. Kit and that guy she was involved with, and Jenny accusing Bette of being unfaithful with Kelly. Adele getting Jenny fired. The missing movie negatives. Your breakup with Mollie. What Mollie’s mother did and said. Jenny accusing you of cheating with Niki, when you didn’t.”

“I didn’t, but only because I got sick. I think I probably would have. Even when Jenny was wrong she was right, in a way.”

“Understood. But the point is, for those last couple of months all you guys were living inside a full-blown Category Five shitstorm. So, no, with the noise level in your lives up around three hundred decibels, there’s no reason you should have picked up vibes that Jenny was keeping a secret from you. How could anyone tell? Jesus, Shane, she was up to her neck in secrets and plots and suspicions and bullshit all the time. That spaceship from _Independence Day_ could have hovered over your house and you guys wouldn’t have noticed it got dark outside. So, yes, she kept a secret from you, a big one. It was one of the five hundred and eighty-six secrets and lies and and paranoid ideas and fantasies and general bullshit going on.”

Marybeth and Lauren came back into the office, each carrying their own coffees plus cups for Shane and Carmen. She handed one to Shane. “You guys all right?” Marybeth asked.

“Not yet. But we’re getting there,” Carmen said, taking her refill from Lauren. “Thanks.”

“Nobody said it was easy,” Marybeth said, sitting down. “Lauren, kick the door shut, please.” Lauren closed the door quietly. “Shane, take a deep breath. Take a sip of coffee.” Shane just looked at her.

“I’m serious,” Marybeth said. “Stand up. Good. Now sit down. Good. Take a sip of coffee.”

“Marybeth—”

“Shane, we need your head in the game. I know you’ve had a shock. Now pull your head out of your ass. Where can we find your father?”

Carmen and Lauren realized Marybeth was using tough love, playing Bad Cop, to get Shane to start functioning again.

“I have no idea,” Shane said.

“Okay. But what was the last thing you knew about where he was, where he lived. Who would know? I understand you have a younger brother somewhere. Where’s he? Gabe was married, last you knew, right? Carla, wasn’t it. Where is she now?”

It only took ten minutes, but it was brutal and hard to watch. Shane gave it all up, willingly, but it was painful. She gave Marybeth Gabe’s last known address up in Oregon City, where she had visited him, and had dinner with him, Carla, and her brother Shea. She gave them Gabe’s telephone number and his e-mail address, as best she knew it, from her cell phone. Then she told them how, after Gabe had come back and taken Shea away, she had tried to contact him, track him down. To yell at him. To scream at him. To call him motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker. But the phone number was disconnected. The e-mail bounced back, undeliverable. There was no way to contact Carla. She couldn’t find Shea. They were all “in the wind,” as they said on the TV cop shows. Shane described meeting Gabe in the restaurant. She described the dinner at their house. Meeting Carla. Meeting Shea. Her brother. Talking. Telling them about the wedding. Inviting them. She told them, Gabe and Carla and Shea, about Carmen, who at that moment was sitting in the same room, with her hand over her eyes, while Shane talked, listening. Tears streamed down Shane’s face.

Gabe smoked Marlboros, she said, in response to a very quiet question from Lauren. He was a Marlboro smoker. Back then, anyway.

She had no idea where he was. Damn good thing, too. She wanted to kill the motherfucker.

“Lauren, what’s up next?” Marybeth asked. “I think we both have some ideas.”

“Yes. I see two immediate things we need to do. One is talk to the police in Mexico about the fishing boat. Maybe we’ll have to go down there, I don’t know yet. On Friday I put in a call to Ensenada but haven’t heard back yet. In a way, it’s like our trip to Bakersfield. We could have done it by phone, but it was important for me to walk the crime scene myself, and talk to their detective face-to-face. Maybe Carmen agrees.”

“Oh, absolutely, no question. I had to walk the scene. I’d have driven out there all by myself, I think. We spent a couple hours talking to their detective. We couldn’t have done that effectively over the phone.”

“So I think we’ll need to go down there as soon as we can. The second big thing is, I tracked down Henry Hooker’s widow, she lives in Rancho Palos Verdes a few blocks from the ocean. I knew we’d be in here most of the morning, so I told her we’d like to come talk to her this afternoon after lunch, but I’d call and confirm this morning as soon as I could. She said she’d be there, she had nothing planned. So that’s what I think we should do next.”

“We’re on the same page,” Marybeth said. “That’s pretty much what I figured, too. Did you ask her if she still had any of her husband’s case files?”

“Sure did. Guess what? They’re in the garage.”

“Terrific. Go to it, Angels.”

“Uh, Marybeth,” Shane said quietly.

“Yes, Shane?”

“I ... uh ... can I take a pass? I ... you know. I need some time. I, uh, just want to go home and uh--”

“I get it,” Marybeth said. She wanted to say, “You want to smoke a couple of joints and put down half a bottle of booze. I would, too. Anything to tamp down the pain.” But she didn’t say it. “Yes, by all means. You have a lot to process. Take whatever time you need. You okay to drive home?”

“I think I can get that far,” Shane said ruefully. It made them laugh, if a little nervously.

“Okay, everybody out,” Marybeth said. “Keep me posted.”


	28. Burner

Lauren took the 10 to the 110, and at Carmen’s suggestion they stopped in Chinatown for lunch.

“Lauren,” Carmen said.

Lauren knew Carmen well enough by now to know when the wheels were spinning inside Carmen’s head, and how she introduced new ideas into their conversation. Lauren, she always began.

“Uh-huh,” Lauren answered, sipping her tiny cup of scalding hot green tea while they waited for their spring rolls to arrive.

“Suppose Jenny knew the negatives were up in the attic. Suppose she found them.”

“Yeah? We talked about this. You and Shane agreed there would be an immediate shitstorm. Jenny would scream loud enough to be heard in La Jolla. She’d tear Hollywood four new assholes. That’s what you guys said.”

“I know. But that was before we knew all about the blackmail, the second blackmail, not Adele’s thing with the sex tape.”

“Take it from the top.”

“Okay. Suppose Jenny found the negatives, right after they’d made the fourth blackmail payment to the Creep. Jenny was already talking about hiring a private detective to find some way to end the blackmail, right? And she’s pressing Niki to agree … and then one day out of the blue she tells Niki, okay, never mind the private detective, you’re right, we won’t do it. Which was a flat-out bald-faced lie. And a short time later she tells Niki they are both _not_ going to pay that month’s blackmail. Niki asks why. Jenny just says, trust me. But see, that’s completely unlike Jenny, to ever change her mind 180 degrees. Much less admit somebody else was right. Not without a really compelling reason. So what I’m thinking is, Jenny found the negatives—”

“--and instead of a shitstorm came up with a new plan.”

“Right. And maybe for an hour or two she yelled and screamed and hit the roof, but nobody heard it, like the tree falling in the forest. Eventually she calms down and starts thinking. She thinks, I don’t care right now who put the negatives upstairs. At least I know now where they are. I don’t care right now who’s framing me for stealing them. I’ll deal with all that later. In the meantime, how can I use them? Can I make a trade with the blackmailer—”

“—Give me back my sex tapes you made with me and Niki—”

“—and stop the blackmail, because I’ll trade you—”

“—something worth far more than what you can get out of me and Niki—”

“—something worth four million bucks, although you won’t be able to get that much—”

“—but you can ask the studio for, like, half a million, or a million. And the studio can cook the books for half a mil, anyway, without batting an eyelash.”

“Right. And then Jenny says, how much you can get is up to you and them, not me, and it’s a nice clean deal, a straight swap, the stolen negatives for my sex tapes, and Niki and I are out of it,” Carmen said. “Then you can do what you want with the ten film canisters. Sell them back to the studio one at a time, all at once, in batches, any damn way you want, and goodbye and good luck, motherfucker. Cue mic drop, Creep out.”

“That’s what you think she said?”

“Not necessarily. It’s what I think she was going to propose to the Creep. And maybe she did. But the transaction never took place, because the negatives were still in the attic the night Jenny was killed. So what I’m saying is, maybe Jenny was negotiating with the Creep. I don’t know how far she got, or even if it started. All I’m suggesting is that was in her mind at the time. Trade the movie negatives for the sex tapes, and end the blackmail.”

“Nice. I like it,” Lauren said. “And let’s take Jenny’s planning one step further into the future.”

“Okay, how?”

“Jenny and the Creep make the deal. They trade the negs for the sex tapes, everybody goes home happy. And then Jenny makes an anonymous phone call to the police. There’s this guy, he has the negatives. He’s extorting the studio. The studio is going to buy them from the Creep. I don’t know who the Creep is, but all you have to do is wiretap the studio, Aaron and his people. When the exchange is made, you follow Aaron or whoever is making the payoff, and you arrest the Creep and get the negatives back. And when the police say, okay, thanks, and by the way who are you? She says, just call me Adele.”

“Wow! That’s really twisted, Lauren. I LIKE it! Nice going. It fucks the Creep, it fucks the studio that fucked Jenny, and it fucks Adele. Trifecta!”

“Yes. And maybe she doesn’t mention Adele, that’s just a little collateral damage she can set up. Or maybe she does it some other way. She tells the Creep to use Adele as the go between. I don’t know. I’m only free-associating. Even if Aaron and Adele aren’t arrested for anything, they’re up to their ears in paying an extortionist, and this time they can’t hush it up—”

“Because Jenny calls the trade newspapers and TV cable entertainment shows anonymously and tells them everything—”

“—the media goes crazy. Major studio scandal, lezzie film stolen, big lezzie star Niki Stevens outed, extortion, maybe the studio board of directors fire Aaron, maybe not, but who cares. And the Creep, he’s sitting in jail, he was in possession of the stolen negatives, so he can be charged with that much, even if nothing else sticks. The Creep tries to tell the cops he didn’t steal the negatives, it was Jenny, because that’s what he truly believes because that’s who gave them to him, and he was just blackmailing her and Niki.”

“Which, obviously, there’s no way in hell he can admit that, and anyway nobody would believe him. And Jenny would say, his story is absurd; why would she steal her own movie? Plus he no longer has the Jenny/Niki sex tapes if he traded them away, and if he kept a copy, that’s even worse, because it corroborates him as a blackmailer.”

“Right. He’d skate on stealing the negatives, but he’s still in possession of stolen property, and of course he was caught red-handed extorting the studio, assuming it all plays out like we said.”

“But something went wrong somewhere. And at Bette and Tina’s house he kills Jenny,” Carmen said.

“I’ve been thinking about that, it’s bothered me, right from the beginning of this thing,” Lauren said.

“What has?”

“How the murder took place. Before we knew the details, all we had was the Creep seeming to stalk them, or watch them. Even when we learned about the blackmail payments, we still didn’t have a motive for murder. Blackmailers don’t usually kill their victims. It cuts off their gravy train and it escalates the crime to a higher plane, maybe even to Death Row and the needle.”

“In theory, anyway.

“Okay, in theory. Yes, this is California, we don’t execute people very much anymore. But anyway, I ask myself, what is this guy’s motive in killing Jenny? And I just don’t see it. He pushes her off the deck. That’s not murder because she survives the fall, that’s just assault. The actual murder occurs when he walks down the steps and rolls her into the pool. Like we told Jack and the ADA, I don’t think it was in any way premeditated. I think he went there to talk to Jenny. Maybe do the swap. Something happened, words were exchanged, he got mad and pushed her off the deck. Who knows, maybe she pushed him first. Hit him. Whatever. And he pushed her back, and zoom, she goes flying off the deck. He’s a big guy, and she was, what, a hundred ten pounds dripping wet. And now she’s lying unconscious by the pool, and she knows who this guy is who pushed her. It’s Gabe McCutcheon, and she can identify him. And now he has no choice but to walk down the steps and roll her into the pool, and drown her,” Lauren said.

“To keep her from telling the cops.”

“Yes.”

“I can see it,” Carmen said.

“Back to the last part of her plot. She and the Creep go through with the deal, she calls the cops anonymously. The blackmailer – now known as Gabe McCutcheon – gets arrested with the film canisters. Jenny’s off the hook for the blackmail, AND she’s off the hook for being framed for stealing them. So when Gabe is arrested and the media announces it and that the film canisters have been recovered, Jenny can look around and see how people react. Because one of them was trying to frame her. And she thinks maybe she can see how people react to discover which one of them was framing her.”

“Who we now know was Niki.”

“Right, but Jenny didn’t know that at the time,” Lauren said. “Maybe she suspected. Or, hell, maybe she did figure out it was Niki. That wouldn’t have mattered at the moment, because the priority was to stop the blackmailer and get the sex tapes back. After that, she can figure out paybacks for Niki.”

Carmen furrowed her brows. “I think I know how she’d have done that. And in a way it’s really beautiful, really an elegant revenge.”

“Okay, I’m dying to know. Tell me.”

“She does nothing. She just sits back and lets the studio release the butchered version of _Lez Girls_. And the movie gets a ton of hype, because of all the background and the arrest of the blackmailer, yadda yadda, and you know what? The movie is terrible, and Niki’s career is ruined, which Niki confessed was her motive all along. Even someone as insensitive as Niki knew it was bad. She’s mocked. Even to herself, Jenny gets to blame the disaster on Adele taking it over, on the studio chickening out and changing the ending, on Niki being a terrible actress, etc. Jenny goes on the talk shows, she bad-mouths Adele, she bad-mouths the studio, she bad-mouths Niki. She’s got a whole new career just heaping bile on her poor, innocent creation, the story of a simple, pure, good-hearted but delicate lesbian from America’s Heartland who wanted to be a writer and who got crushed by the perverted Hollywood machine and Hollywood culture. I mean, maybe she even writes another memoir, the follow-up to _Lez Girls_ , a tell-all behind-the-scenes book about the whole thing. I’m telling you, Lauren, Jenny would have eaten that shit up with a big soup ladle, never mind a common teaspoon.”

“Jesus,” Lauren said. “You really think Jenny was smart enough to have it all figured out that far in advance?” Two spring rolls arrived and they each took one.

“Yes, I do. She was a writer, that’s exactly the kind of stuff she did. And remember, we think she started to figure out what was going on about a month or more before she was murdered. In that last month, even with all the shitstorm going on around her, she’d have been thinking it all out. Even if she was responsible for a lot of the shitstorm herself. She was a shitstorm multi-tasker.”

Lauren was quiet.

“What’s the matter?” Carmen asked.

“Oh, uh, nothing.”

“Come on, what is it?”

“I was just thinking…I’m not sure how to say this. I know Jenny was your friend, and she was once your fuck buddy. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think I like her very much, from everything I’ve learned about her. And ... I hate to say this… but I’m glad you and Shane split. I know you got hurt bad from the wedding disaster, but I also think you were lucky to get out of that group. Maybe even out of LA. Don’t get me wrong, I like Shane, I really do, and I’m beginning to see those good points about her that you and Alice and a few others see and admire, but aren’t obvious to people who don’t know her well. And she’s ... um ... different. In a good way. All that said, I’m glad you didn’t marry her, because I think it would have turned out badly, and you’d have gotten hurt a lot worse than you did just from the busted wedding. Maybe all I’m saying is, I’m glad you weren’t part of the shitstorm there at the end.”

“Thanks. I am, too. I was on the ship going to and from Hawaii, and I’d get an e-mail from Alice or Tina once in a while, keeping me up-to-date and filled in, but it was kind of piecemeal, you know? All I knew was there was this high drama in progress.”

“Here’s something to think about. The deal goes the way you suggest, but without Jenny and the Creep meeting. They go through an intermediary, or somehow make the exchange without actual face-to-face contact. Whatever. Then the Creep is arrested with the negatives in his possession. Only then does Jenny learns it’s Gabe McCutcheon. Now what?”

“Jesus,” Carmen whispered.

“And what does Shane think when she hears about it?”

“Shane would never have known the negatives were in the house. She’d never have thought Jenny stole them. And her coat with Mollie’s letter in the pocket would still be up there in the attic. She’d wonder how her father got the negatives, though. And she’d have had no reason to break up with Jenny unless she goes upstairs and finds her jacket with the letter.” Carmen though about it. “This is hurting my head. I guess we’ll never know, though, because that’s not what happened that night. Gabe killed Jenny. One shitstorm ends, and a new, different one begins.”

They split a single order of kung pao shrimp and friend rice, which was enough for themselves and a friend besides.

“Which brings me to my next question. Suppose Jenny is communicating with the Creep, and she doesn’t know who he is. Suppose Hooker wasn’t able to find out his identity before he went on vacation. Jenny and Niki have missed their March blackmail payment, and if the Creep isn’t angry, he’s at least annoyed. But maybe he’s been negotiating with Jenny, so he’s mollified for the time being, but he’s still in a hurry, he wants his money or wants to make the deal, whatever. Jenny says, yes, okay, let’s do the trade, but I’m really swamped right now, my friends next door are moving, I’m making them a tape, I’m working night and day on it, and I can’t deal with you and the trade until after the party. Then she realizes, you know what? The farewell tape is three hours long, and everybody is going to be up in Bette and Tina’s media room--”

“--The ideal time to meet with the Creep,” Carmen said. “Her own house empty and safe. Shane’s next door. Her project is done. She has time. She can go to the party, start the tape, say I’ll be back in a few minutes, off she goes.”

“So she tells the Creep, by text or e-mail, okay, meet me at my house, say, after 8 p.m. Make sure nobody sees you. But Jenny also feels safe, like meeting in a very public space, because all she has to do is yell and all her friends come running. She’s like, a hundred feet from all her friends if anything bad happens.”

“So Jenny’s waiting, either in her own back yard, on the back patio, maybe, or in Bette and Tina’s backyard.”

“Right. And here’s the next thing. She does not, repeat not, bring the negatives down from the attic. She’s not going to get her fingerprints on them. But the negs are right there if she needs them. If they do the deal, she’ll take him into the bedroom, pull down the steps, and tell him he can go get the negative canisters himself. If he leaves fingerprints, fine, just in case. If he’s wearing gloves, that’s fine, too. Doesn’t matter. So she’s sitting there waiting for the Creep to show up, and when he does, she sees, for the first time--”

“Gabe McCutcheon.”

“Yes. And so my question now is?”

“What does she do when she sees he’s the blackmailer. The Creep. Or, more to the point, exactly how bat-shit berserk does she go, because I think that’s the answer to your question. If it was just some person she didn’t know, some studio hand, or one of Niki’s posse, whatever, she’d just do the deal and say kiss my ass goodbye. But no. It’s Gabe. And Jenny blows a gasket.”

“And?”

“Hmm. She doesn’t scream, because they can’t hear her, and that’s because she’s not on the deck or in Bette and Tina’s back yard. So she’s probably on her own patio.”

“Right. Is she scared? Afraid for her life?”

“No. Because she knows it’s about the money, the deal. He’s not there to kill her. That would be stupid. She’s not afraid for her life. She’s met Gabe, and she knows he’s an asshole because of what he did up in Whistler. Nevertheless, she’s really, really pissed. And she’s contemptuous. She’s not scared, because she knows he’s a shit.”

“Does he try to calm her down?”

“Maybe. But they argue. She bolts, runs like hell for Bette and Tina’s house, and runs up the steps. He’s chasing her. He grabs her at the top of the stairs, they are arguing, she pushes him, he pushes back, she goes off the deck, accidentally. And that’s when it turns to murder.”

“Okay, here’s a problem. We’ve been thinking one reason Jenny never told Shane about the blackmail wasn’t because she didn’t trust Shane, but rather because she was worried the Creep might be someone close to Shane. So maybe she had suspected Gabe as the possible blackmailer for a while, and hired Hooker for confirmation. And maybe Hooker did confirm Gabe was the blackmailer. So he’s finished his job and can go off sport-fishing without the job being hung up. In any case, Jenny’s sitting on the back patio, waiting, and Gabe McCutcheon shows up. Just as she had suspected or been told. Does she still go berserk? Is she bat-shit pissed and crazy? I say no.”

“No, you’re right, I agree. In that case, she’s angry inside but outwardly she’s calm. She’s had time to cool down and plan. So, motherfucker, we meet again, she says, back for another bite? Something smart-ass like that.”

“So what happened? Why did it go south?”

Carmen thought about it. “I got nothin’.”

Lauren said. “There’s too many possibilities, but not one that jumps out. One is they just didn’t agree on terms. He wants more money in addition to the negatives. Or he didn’t want the deal at all, just his ten-thousand-dollar payments every month, which he came to collect, and they were late. Or something spooked one or the other of them. Maybe Jenny didn’t run next door to Bette and Tina’s, maybe she just said fuck you, Gabe, and calmly started walking over to Tina and Bette’s, playing hard to get. He follows, they argue at the top of the stairs. Pushing match ensues, Jenny loses. Maybe he was supposed to bring his sex tapes, but didn’t, so Jenny’s the one who calls the deal off. All we know is it was Gabe in the back yard, they go up the stairs, and Jenny gets pushed, thrown, shoved, or otherwise falls off the deck. He rolls her into the pool. Game over. Time to run away.”

“So how do we find out which one it was?” Carmen asked.

“Easiest question all day,” Lauren said. “We ask him when we arrest him. If he won’t talk, you and Shane beat the shit out of him until he does. What’s your fortune cookie fortune say?”

Carmen broke her fortune cookie in two pieces, popped one piece in her mouth, and accompanied by crunching noises, said “You are going to meet a horny former homicide detective who won’t help you beat up a murderer.”

“That’s really weird,” Lauren said, crunching half of her cookie. “They usually aren’t that specific. Mine says, ‘You are a horny former homicide detective who doesn’t want to get her case tossed out.’”

“Uncanny,” Carmen said.

* * *

They got back on the 110, hopped off onto the Pacific Coast Highway, dropped down Vermont Avenue to Palos Verdes Drive North. When they crossed the intersection of Palos Verdes Drive East, Lauren pointed to the right. “We have an LASD station about a mile up that road, the Lomita Station. I worked a case out of there a year or so ago.” When they came to Rolling Hills Estates she turned left onto Hawthorne Boulevard, and went past Palos Verdes Peninsula High School. “Had a pretty serious missing persons case here,” she said. “Daughter of a wealthy family.”

“How did it turn out?” Carmen asked.

“It didn’t. We never found her. She still in the wind, after three years. She’d be 19 by now.”

“But what do you think?”

Lauren shrugged. “Depends on whether she was doing any serious drugs. If she was, she could be dead by now or turning twenty-dollar tricks somewhere. But if I was guessing, she’s out in the valley, making porn movies. She was pretty cute, and the parents didn’t want to say so, but I think she had a pretty active sex life. She could be one of Shane’s best customers, for all I know.”

“Maybe you should show Shane her photo.”

“You know, that’s not such a bad idea. Although I wonder how Shane would feel about narcing on her customers. My guess is she’d be very reluctant to do that. Anyway, being a runaway isn’t illegal, and her status as a juvenile expired when she turned 18. She’s still on the books as an open missing persons case, but if we did find her, she’s perfectly within her rights to tell us to go screw ourselves.”

“Maybe. But maybe she should at least tell her parents she’s alive and well.”

“If she is well.”

* * *

Mrs. Harold Hooker lived in a modest single-story ranch-style home just up from the cul-de-sac on a quiet street of small homes, many ranch style and some Spanish style with red tile roofs, in a development sandwiched between Los Verdes Golf Course and the Vicente Bluffs Reserve, just north of the formidable cliffs that lined the Point Vicente Interpretive Center and the Point Vicente Lighthouse. Lauren drove the winding Hawthorne Boulevard past the golf course, crested a hill, and found herself on a downward slope with the blue, blue, blue Pacific Ocean up ahead. Some 20 miles to the south past the lighthouse on the point Santa Catalina Island lay basking in the early afternoon haze, but Lauren and Carmen couldn’t see it from the road.

Still, “Wow,” Lauren whispered, seeing the view.

“I know,” Carmen said. “I’ve always loved the coast along here. Shane and I came here once for whale-watching. We saw a bunch of Pacific gray whales heading south. They were fantastic.”

The land in this part of LA County was dry and arid, like most of the region. Down at the bottom of the slope at the cliff line they could see palm trees, and there were many palms of several different types along with fruit trees, yuccas and cactus. Lauren turned off Hawthorne near the top of the slope and in a moment they were in front of Mrs. Hooker’s home. The front of the house faced up the slope and inland, which was fine with people who lived on that side of the street, because the view they had from their back porches, patios and backyards was spectacular. The people across the street had spectacular views, too, but from their front windows and front yards. If they sat out back in the evening, the had very little view at all, just the top of the crest, and no sunset.

They got out of the car and started up the driveway toward the front door. Just then the garage door started to open, and when it was up they saw a pleasant, slightly chunky woman in her late 50s standing there waiting for them. “Hi,” she said. “I assume you are Detective Hancock? And you must be Officer Morales.”

“That’s right,” Lauren said smiling and holding out her badge case and ID.

“Oh, I don’t need to see that,” Mrs. Hooker said. “Come on in, get out of that hot sun.”

The garage was wide enough for two vehicles, and a silver Honda Accord was parked in the bay closest to the house and the interior garage door. The other bay was filled with filing cabinets, three rows of them, one row against the far wall and along the back of the bay, and a separate island of cabinets back to back. Lauren and Carmen stared at them.

Mrs. Hooker laughed. “That’s what a lifetime of being a private eye gets you. Filing cabinets full of cases. I told Ace, you probably have enough blackmail material to put the screws to most of California.”

“Ace?” Carmen asked.

“My husband, Harold,” Mrs. Hooker said. “He went by Harry to most people. I usually called him Ace. Ace Ventura Detective Agency. Sometimes Sam, for Sam Spade, or Dick Tracy. When I was pissed about something or other, I called him Miles. That’s for Miles Archer, one of the bad guys in--”

“-- _The Maltese Falcon_ ,” Carmen said. “He got shot five minutes into it.”

“You know your old classics,” Mrs. Hooker said. “That was his favorite. That’s why he called his detective agency Spade and Archer.”

“We thought it was brilliant marketing,” Lauren said.

“It was,” Mrs. Hooker said. “Can I get you anything? Water? Iced tea? Sodas?”

“Oh, thanks, we ate on the way here,” Lauren said.

“You want to come in the house and talk? Or we can go out on the patio. My guess is you want something here from his files, though. My legs aren’t good as they used to be. I can’t stand out here on this hard concrete too long.”

She pushed a button on the wall near the house door and the garage door closed. She walked to it and took a large, hefty padlock of a hook on the wall and padlocked the garage door shut from the inside.

“That’s some door and lock,” Lauren said.

“Steel reinforced. Heavy duty, close to burglar-proof short of using dynamite. Some friends in the private detective business advised me to make sure nobody could get in here without me knowing or setting off a ton of alarms. This whole place is wired and monitored like you wouldn’t believe. It’s because of what’s in those files. Not that I know anything about what’s in them, all I know is, I need to protect them.”

Lauren and Carmen followed her into the house, through the spotless and nicely kept kitchen, and out onto the back patio. As Lauren had suspected, the view of the Pacific down at the bottom of the slope was spectacular.

“I like to come out here in the evening and watch the sunset, and talk to Harry,” Mrs. Hooker said. “I reckon he’s out there somewhere.” She meant the Pacific Ocean. They sat in chairs around a glass-topped table. The back yard was small, but nicely landscaped southwestern style, with cactus, ornamental weeds, and plants in bright Talavera pottery featuring sun themes.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lauren said. “I hate to ask, but what can you tell us about his disappearance?”

“Not a lot to tell,” Mrs. Hooker said. “We had a timeshare down in Ensenada, had it for years. Still do, only I haven’t been back because... well, it wouldn’t be the same without Ace. Guess I ought to sell it to one of those outfits that buys timeshares. Anyway, we had the same two weeks every year, second and third weeks of March, after the heavy tourist season and before the weather got too awful hot. Ace loved to go sport-fishing, he had his favorite captain, Manuel DeGarza, down at Sergio’s Sport-fishing Marina right in the harbor downtown. He could walk there from our condo. He’d go out every chance he could, fishing for yellowtail or bonito. There’s these two islands about 12 miles out called Islas Todos Santos, Islands of All Saints. Nothing on them except two lighthouse and a bunch of seals and sea birds. Anyway, there’s lots of good fishing out there. Off the northwest point, there’s a long, deep underwater canyon. Surfers love it, because the waves come up that canyon and break off the tip off the island. They even call the place ‘Killers,’ because the waves are so big. But you go out further away from the breakers and there’s some great fishing out there in that canyon. Ace would catch whatever he felt like, way more than we could ever eat, and at the dock he’d keep two or three fish they cleaned right there, and he’d give some to the boat captain, and he’d give the rest away to local kids. They knew to look for him coming back from Todos Santos. ‘Senor Harry, Senor Harry,’ they’d all shout when they saw the boat coming back in.”

“Did he always go out by himself?” Carmen asked.

“No, not always. Sometimes one of his buddies from Hollywood would come down, and once in a while the captain asked if one or two other clients could come along. Once it was a famous TV actor from one of those police shows, I guess he was a client, not just an acquaintance, but of course I never asked. We first started coming down here, I used to go out, too, just for the ride, you know, and the sun, and keep them company. Saw a lot of whales. Good whale-watching out there at the right time of year. But after a few trips I got bored, and you know, I gotta be careful about the skin cancer. I had to have some spots removed. So he’d go out and I’d stay and play canasta with my friends in the air-conditioned shade.”

“Tell me what happened that last time,” Lauren said.

“We came down Sunday morning, like we always did. The timeshare ran from Sunday to the following Saturday, but for two weeks.”

“Sunday, March 8,” Lauren said.

“That sounds right. The second week in March?”

“Yes.”

“So we came down, Ace went out fishing Monday, he couldn’t wait to get out there. He went out a couple days more. It was Friday he went out again, and they never came back. At first I wasn’t too worried. They usually got back early or mid-afternoon. Once, though, there was some other boat out there ran out of gas, and they helped the guy out, towed him in, and that took longer, but Ace called when they got into cellphone range, and I wasn’t worried. Couple times, especially if he was with a friend, they’d stop at a bar and have a couple of beers with Manuel. Sometimes he’d help Manuel clean up the boat. I was in a pottery class that afternoon, I like to make pottery. I made those pots.” She pointed to the Talavera pieces on the patio. “I got home about four, Ace wasn’t home yet, but I didn’t think anything about it. Five o’clock came, then six, no phone call, nothing. So I called him. No answer. I thought, well, they’re sitting in a bar, and he can’t hear it ring. But we were supposed to go out to dinner. I called the marina. They said Manuel’s boat hadn’t got back yet. That’s when I started to get a little worried. But you know, the weather was fine, no storms, no nothing out there, nothing like that. I waited until I couldn’t stand it any more, and called back about 8 o’clock. The dockmaster said he was getting concerned, too, and he’d ask around. He got on the radio, started asking other boats out there if they’d seen Manuel. Most of the boats had come back in the early afternoon, like they do, and then gone back out on their second trips of the day, you know sunset cruises, whale-watching, whatever. So there were a lot of boats out there. Nobody had seen Manuel since that morning. There were no distress calls from anyone, no boat fires, nobody ran out of gas. Nothing. Finally I asked him to call Mexican Maritime Search and Rescue. That’s their version of our Coast Guard. They have a base right there in Ensenada Harbor. They have a couple of boats and some helicopters. They sent a boat out and put a helicopter up, but they didn’t find anything or see anything unusual. They looked real good all around Todos Santos, too, right before it got dark, in case the boat went ashore on the rocks somehow, but there was nothing. They called off the search at midnight but started back up at first light again on Saturday, and all that weekend. Nothing. By then I was talking to Mrs. DeGarza, too, and she was as worried as I was. They have a couple of kids, you know? So it wasn’t like Manuel to go off on a bender or anything. Long story short, we never saw or heard anything from them to this day. Search and Rescue filed reports with the police department and all, and officers came out and Mrs. DeGarza and I talked to them.”

Lauren and Carmen let a long silence go by.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren finally said. “Tell me, what do _you_ think happened?”

Mrs. Hooker looked at her. Her eyes were wet. She looked out over the ocean. “I have no idea. Something happened. The boat sprang a leak. Some kind of accident. Trouble is, there was no debris. Nobody saw smoke or fire or an explosion. No distress calls, no SOS. Whatever happened, it happened out of sight of all the other boats. I mean, maybe they went up the coast or down the coast for some reason, and whatever happened, it happened up or down or a lot further out. Or maybe a drug smuggler hijacked the boat and took a load of drugs up to San Diego. Who knows.”

“But what do you think?” Lauren asked quietly.

Mrs. Hooker looked at her and bit her lip.

“You think something bad happened.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Mrs. Hooker said. “I’ve been waiting. For two years. I know my Ace. He didn’t run away. He’s not living in Buenos Aires or Italy or some damn place with his new 20-year-old wife. He hasn’t had a hard-on in ten years. He’s dead. I know he’s dead, I just don’t know how or why, that’s all. And yes, sure, the first thing I thought about was his work. Something related to that.”

“So what happened to his business? What did you do when you got back to LA?”

“I stayed down there in the timeshare, then came home alone at the end of the second week. In the meantime, I had called everybody. You know, his sister in Phoenix. His lawyer. A couple of other private eyes he worked with.”

“Tell me about his lawyer.”

“It was a guy he worked with a lot. Had major studio connections. He didn’t know anything specific. Together we talked to the LA Missing Persons people, filed a report.”

“LAPD or LA County?” Lauren asked.

“LAPD. We lived in the city back then. You’re LA County, I think you said.”

“That’s right. If you lived in the city we wouldn’t have had jurisdiction. What did LAPD and your lawyer say?”

“Not a lot. They looked into it, of course, but they had nothing. They wanted to look through Ace’s files, but his lawyer said no way, not without a warrant and probable cause, and of course they didn’t have any. And you know the law, right? I have to wait to have him declared legally dead. In the meantime, I talked it over with our lawyer and accountant, and decided to move out here. I sold our house and Ace’s office. Bob, the lawyer, he said we had to keep all Ace’s records and cases, we couldn’t just throw everything out. Since Ace was missing, the legal stuff was a nightmare, but Bob took care of it. I have to keep all these records in case somebody needs something and has the proper paperwork and all.”

“Has that happened?”

“Yes, a few times. There were two active cases Ace was working on, and lawyers and private detectives petitioned Bob to get those files and take over the cases. So we did that, gave them what they wanted. Bob was the one who made sure I got an extra strong, reinforced garage door and all the security measures. At first I talked about putting the files into storage somewhere, but it would cost more money than I had, and without Ace there was no income. We’d had a comfortable income and money in the bank, and investments and all. Ace did very well in the business. But after he went missing, you know, I had to start thinking about income and expenses, and all. So we decided I’d keep the files and just make sure they were safe. So there they are, in the garage. End of story. So tell me, why are you here?”

“Like I told you on the phone, we’re working on a cold case, a homicide two years ago,” Lauren said. “We only just learned recently that the victim, Jennifer Schecter, had apparently hired your husband to deal with a blackmail problem she had. Then she was murdered, we think by the blackmailer. We just found out Friday morning that Schecter had hired Mr. Hooker. At least we think so, that’s what we need to confirm. We found a credit card payment to Spade and Archer about three weeks before her murder.”

Mrs. Hooker nodded.

“Does the name Jenny Schecter ring a bell? Or her murder case?”

“No, not at all. The first thing I should probably tell you is, Ace was always very discreet about his work. I mean, _really_ discreet. He specialized in movie stars and celebrities, as I guess you know by now, and he never, ever told me about his cases. I know he had tons of good dirt on hundreds of big-name people, because that’s what he did. But he worked for them, not against them. He was one of the main go-to guys if somebody got in trouble, and you had to have absolute, iron-clad integrity and trust to keep getting hired. If people even had the slightest whiff you couldn’t keep a secret, Ace would never work in this town again.”

“The second thing I should tell you is one of the reasons Ace and I stayed happily married so long was I never asked him about his work, and I don’t give a rat’s patoot about Hollywood and all that stuff. I read books, I like classical music, I play canasta and do pottery that looks like Talavera. I could care less what bimbo was sleeping with who, who fathered so-and-so’s baby, who’s straight, who’s secretly gay, who stuffed what up his nose. One night we were watching TV and there was a teaser commercial for a movie that was coming out. Ace started growling. I said, what’s the matter? He says, ‘Nothing. This guy is one of the biggest assholes in the state of California. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff he did.’ And that’s all he said, and I never asked. I’m not gonna tell who it was, but you’d know the name, everybody would. And to this day I have no idea what that actor did. I could probably find it on the Internet in three seconds. But I just don’t care.” She pointed to the filing cabinets. “It’s probably in there somewhere, maybe. Do I understand you think maybe that murder case had something to do with Ace’s disappearance?”

“It’s become our working hypothesis,” Lauren said. “It wasn’t at first, because right after Jenny was murdered, one of her friends falsely confessed, and went to prison. She’s still up in Humboldt now, as a matter of fact. So the case never got the full, proper investigation it should have. It gets messy and complicated, but the short version is, two years later we opened it back up for a better, closer look. And almost the first thing we discovered was a second murder, out in Bakersfield, that nobody in LA knew about. It was one of the women closely connected to the original group of women associated with Jenny and the events of her murder. Then just two weeks ago we re-interviewed another witness slash suspect at the time, and discovered Jenny and this woman, an actress, were being blackmailed. This woman said she and Jenny talked about hiring a private detective to find out who the blackmailer was, or deal with him. Then this woman said they had agreed not to hire the detective, but we suspected that might be a lie Jenny told her. So we looked and found the credit card payment to Spade and Archer. So here we are. It appears Jenny hired your husband, she was murdered a few weeks later, your husband disappeared a week after that, and then another person was murdered out in Bakersfield a few months later. If you count the boat captain, Manuel, you said his name was, that’s four people, two clearly dead, two missing and probably dead.”

“Too many to be a coincidence,” Mrs. Hooker said, shaking her head.

“That’s what we think, too,” Lauren said.

Mrs. Hooker looked out over the Pacific Ocean. “Okay. Let me go call Bob. I think it will be all right, but I just want to call him. Are you two okay out here? Or do you want to come inside?”

Lauren looked at Carmen. “We’re good out here,” Lauren said. “The sun’s nice. We’ll work on our tans.”

“I’ll bring iced tea when I come out,” Mrs. Hooker said, and went into her house.

Carmen waited until Mrs. Hooker was safely in house. “Want to take off our tops?”

“Tops, bottoms, underwear, gun, shoes, the works. But I don’t think it’s the most practical idea you’ve had all week. Best idea, yes. Doable, no.”

“We could ask Mrs. Hooker to strip down and join us. She seems pretty hip.”

“Would you sunbath nude in front of your mother?”

“No, probably not.”

“Me, either. Let me just close my eyes and dream about it being just you and me.”

They closed their eyes and let the sun beat down on them. After a while, Carmen said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Lauren said. “The boat captain, too.”

“Got any idea how?”

“Pretty easy. Guy comes along the dock, says, hey, I hear the yellowtail are biting, can I go out with you? He’s got pesos, he’s happy to pay his share. Manuel and Ace say sure, okay. They go out. Somewhere out beyond Totos Santos he shoots them or bludgeons them, or whatever. Then he drives the boat far, far to the south or far, far to the north, well out of sight of any other boats and reasonably far from an eventual search area. He’s got all damn day, he can go, what, 20 or 30 miles an hour for six or eight hours. He could go as long as there’s fuel. Maybe he waits until dark. Then he wraps an anchor and anchor chain around the bodies and drops them in deep water. Then he finds a good deep spot not too far from shore, he shoots some holes in the bottom, sits there on the gunnel while it sinks, and when he’s satisfied it’s going to the bottom he swims ashore. Maybe he’s done his homework and has picked his spot. Maybe he’s left a car waiting. Or a bicycle, who knows. He walks, bikes or drives away. Boat’s never found, because it’s a hundred or two hundred miles away from where anyone would look for it. Bodies are never found, because sharks have had dinner on them.”

“And it has his signature on it. It looks like it could be an accident.”

“Yep.”

After a minute went by, Carmen said, “Let’s get this motherfucker.”

“Tell me about it,” Lauren said.

“What I want to know is, how did Gabe find out about Harold Hooker, and how did he track him to Ensenada?”

“I’m willing to bet the file in the garage will tell us.”

“Think it’s out there?”

“It better be. If it’s missing we’re screwed.”

“Sure you don’t want to take off all your clothes?”

“I have mixed feelings,” Lauren said.

“Conflicted.”

“Since you put it that way. I admire your powers of word association, though. I say we’re screwed, you want to get naked.”

“I’m a direct, right-to-the-point kinda gal.”

“That’s what I’ve begun to figure out.”

“When I was a kid I wanted to be deep and moody and brooding, but it didn’t work out.”

“No. Anyway, who wants to have sex with someone who’s deep and moody and brooding. Who even wants to have a nice glass of _Égalite_ 2010 _Crémant de Bourgogne_ with its hints of peach and honey blossom with someone who’s thinking about hanging themselves in the root cellar? Not me.”

“Or a _Purple Hand_ beer, the new beer of choice among Mexican and Chicana homosexuals.”

“I thought you were a _Dos Equis_ girl.”

“I am, as a rule. Did I ever mention to you the last time I was home on leave I went on a gay and lesbian wine tour up on the Russian River in Sonoma County a year or so ago? There’s a town up there, Guerneville, that has the second highest percentage of same-sex households in the country. Plus it is absolutely gorgeous country.”

“We could move up there and form our own lesbian detective agency. What would we call it? Spade and Archer isn’t an option.”

“How about ‘Puss and Boots’?”

“Not bad. How about ‘Dick Tracers’? We could go after bail jumpers. Guys who owe alimony and child support.”

“Do you think there’s enough of them working in the gay vineyards and wineries to support us in a style above, say, total abject poverty?”

“You make a good point, Grasshopper.”

Just then Mrs. Hooker came through the back door onto the patio, carrying a tray with a pitcher, glasses filled with ice cubes and tea, and small bowls of lemon slices and packets of sweetener. She also had a manila file holder under her arm. Carmen shot to her feet to help. “Let me get that,” she said, taking the tray and setting it on the table.

“Thanks. I was worried about this folder slipping out.” She put the folder on the table and passed glasses to Lauren and Carmen. “Help yourselves to lemon and what-not. There’s sugar, Splenda, Sweet-and-Low and Truvia.”

Lauren and Carmen put lemon and artificial sweetener in their teas, and sat back down.

“Okay, let me tell you what I found out. Bob was in a meeting but I spoke to his AA. What she said was, I can show you the file you want, but you can’t take anything with you, just yet. You can take all the notes you want, take photographs with your cell phones. If you think you actually need to take physical possession of something, send or e-mail them a formal signed letter, and they will comply. What she basically said was, it’s just CYA. She said you’d probably understand.”

“Yes, we understand,” Lauren said. “Thank you. Tell Bob and his people thank you, too.”

Mrs. Hooker smiled, said, “Here,” handed Lauren the file and headed to the door with her glass of ice tea. “I’ll leave you to it,” she said, going inside.

Lauren opened the file, which held sheets of legal-sized yellow legal tablet pages, with hand-written notes written with what looked like ball-point pen. Lauren read out loud.

_Feb. 10, 2009. Phone call, 9:43 a.m. Jennifer Schecter, uh, her phone number, blah blah, appointment request. 3 pm: Ms. Schecter, her address, e-mail address, says freelance writer and project developer, formerly Shaolin Studios. Declined to say how she got name of S &A, just FOAF._

Friend of a friend, I guess that means.

_Blackmail case, two vics, herself, plus unnamed Hollywood personality. Sex tapes. $10 thou month ea, paid five months. $100k total. Actual $9,950 ea. But same idea as 10k, no reporting. Goal: Discover ident capital B capital M,_

“I guess that means blackmailer, resolve issues. Paragraph.”

_Discussed retainer, $5k, hourly rates, expenses, draws. JS agreed, credit card. It gives her card number, looks like the one we know about. Says, told JS fee includes burn for comm._

“Burn for comm?” Carmen asked

“Burner phone for communications, would be my guess. He wrote here the model serial number and a phone number. I’m guessing he had one on hand and gave it to her. Wait just a minute.”

Lauren walked to the back door and opened it. “Mrs. Hooker? Could you answer something for us?”

“Yes, dear, what is it,” Mrs. Hooker asked, coming out onto the patio.

Lauren held the sheet in her hand. “This seems to indicate your husband gave Jenny Schecter a burner phone. Is that possible? Is that something he did?”

“Oh, yes, that was part of his standard practice,” Mrs. Hooker said. “Ace used to buy them a dozen or two dozen at a time, with the numbers, all charged up and ready to go. Often the clients didn’t want to have their phone calls with him back and forth logged on their personal phones, so he gave them a burner. Then they could call or text back and forth as much as they wanted, and there would be no record of it on the client’s personal phone. His clients talked about lots of things they never wanted recorded or logged by anybody. He built the cost of the phone into the general bill. If you hired Ace, you got the phone as part of the deal, if it was necessary. And he didn’t want the client to have to go out and buy their own burner, maybe they’d screw it up, or take too long, or whatever. He wanted them to walk out of his office with the burner on them, ready to go. And if one fell into the wrong hands, it would trace back to him, not to the client.”

“Makes sense,” Lauren said.

“If there’s anything else, just ask.”

“I will, thanks,” Lauren said. When Mrs. Hancock was out of earshot, Lauren turned to Carmen with a frown.

“What?” Carmen asked.

“We never found a burner phone. They found Jenny’s cell phone in her room the night of the murder. They got all the calls she made from it, and there was nothing suspicious, nobody we didn’t know or couldn’t explain. But there was no burner. And that’s why there’s no calls to Hooker on her regular phone.”

Carmen looked at her. “He took it.”

“Yes.”

“You think that’s what he was after?”

“Too soon to tell. It’s possible he didn’t even know about it, she just had it on her at the time, and he just grabbed it. Maybe she was talking on it, or trying to call Harry. Yes, he took it. No, we don’t know if it’s significant. Yet.”

“You said Harry wrote down Jenny’s phone number.”

“Yes, looks like the first incoming call.”

“What was the number?”

Lauren read it.

“No, that’s not her cell phone,” Carmen said. She looked at her own cell for its contacts. “No, that wasn’t her number.”

“Hmmm. Okay. She made the very first call to him from some other phone, then. A pay phone, if she could still find one somewhere. She was being really, really careful.”

“Keep reading the notes,” Carmen said.

“Right. It says ‘Background.’ Let’s see.

_JS colon wrote Lez Girls, memoir, Shaolin Studios bought, 175k, JS wrote screenplay, became director, fired, replace by Adele Channing, comma, backstabbed. JS idents Niki Stevens, star of LG, as co-BM vic. JS says lied to Niki about NOT capitalized N, O, T, hiring me, so don’t tell Niki. Adele used sex tape of JS/Niki to get JS fired. JS believes this NOT, capitalized again, related to current BM problem. Niki is ex-GF. Someone stole movie negs, JS doesn’t know who, suspects nearly everybody connected. Believes Tina framed but doesn’t believe Tina did it. Adele finished movie, hates Adele but doesn’t think Adele stole her own movie._

_“Paragraph. “_

_JS currently in relationship w/Shane McCutcheon, housemate, friend for 6 yr. Shane NOT, capitalized, BM. Asked if Shane stole movie, says not remotely capable._

“So she didn’t suspect Shane,” Carmen said. “Good. But I don’t like the way it’s worded. It’s like she thinks Shane can’t tie her own shoelaces.”

“Yes, but maybe we’re just reading too much into it. Um ... there’s lots of notes describing how the payments were dropped off, locations at Hollywood Bowl and the observatory in Griffith Park, dates and times. Okay, here we go, it says quote Pos suspects, and it’s a numbered list.

_One, Alice Pieszecki, spelled wrong. Claims JS stole AP’s movie treatment, sold for half mil. Admits received half mil. Pressed, JS denies stole but is lying._

“I admire his insight,” Carmen said. “He picked up on that right away.”

“Let me ask you,” Lauren said. “Was Jenny a good liar?”

Carmen thought about it. “That’s iffy. One the one hand Jenny lied a lot, pretty constantly, about all kinds of stuff, stuff she really didn’t need to lie about. But it wasn’t always actually lying, if you understand what I mean. She somehow managed to talk herself into believing what she was saying. Sometimes it was just shading the truth. Or, you know, she was operating in a Hollywood environment, where everybody’s always bullshitting everybody anyway. So yes, she said stuff that was untrue, and at some level knew it was untrue.”

“You understand you’re saying she was pathological, don’t you?”

Carmen sighed. “Yeah, I guess I do. What we used to say was, Jenny was a writer, she lived inside her head, with her demons, as she liked to say. It was her job to make stuff up, and she was good at it. And yet, here’s the thing. Just about every one of us in the group knew when she was lying, or fantasizing, or whatever you want to call what she did, sooner or later.”

“Did she have a ‘tell’? You know, like gamblers say when they know somebody’s bluffing.”

“I know what a tell is,” Carmen said. “Yeah, maybe she did, now that I think about it. You know what it was? Her eyes got real big, and she looked at you super, super sincere. She was selling her lie. But I don’t think she knew it.”

“That’s part of the definition of a tell,” Lauren said. “The person doesn’t realize he or she is doing it. If they did, they’d stop it.”

“I want to say something else,” Carmen said. “I don’t think Jenny lied to me, back when we were, uh, you know. A thing. She was still fairly sane, back then. It was over the last few years she started unraveling. That’s what Alice called it. When she was being polite, anyway. Otherwise she’d just say, ‘That bitch be cra cra.’” She sighed again.

“What?” Lauren asked.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just ... I hate talking about my friends like this. I love all these people, I do, they’ve been my good friends for years, the whole bunch of them, Jenny, Alice, Helena, Bette, Tina, Kit. Shane, for a while. And yes, sure, they all have their flaws and tics and peccadilloes, and god knows, they’ve all done some shitty stuff once in a while. But ... talking about them like this, it feels like I’m criticizing them, betraying them, even, when I’m not. I love them, flaws and all. So yeah, Jenny was cra cra, and a compulsive serial liar, and a back-stabbing schemer and thief. And my ex-lover, and my friend.” She paused. “I don’t know what that makes me.”

“My hero,” Lauren said quietly.

Carmen waved her hands in front of her. “No, no, no, don’t tell me shit like that. Look, let’s get back to Harry’s notes. Stop grinning at me.”

“Right. Stop grinning. Got it,” Lauren said, getting mock serious. She picked up Harry’s notes. “Back to posts.”

_Number two. Max Sweeney, tranny, former Moira Sweeney, former GF 4 yrs ago, angry, needs money for op._

“Guess that’s operation. Says quote:

_"Max blames JS for breakup w/ BF, Tom Mater, father of her child, 6 mos preg. ??_

“Harry put two question marks in parentheses after preg.”

_JS says has anger issues. JS claims not respon breakup parens (don’t believe her) close parens. JS explains tranny preg v rare._

“Harry’s good at reading her,” Carmen said.

“I know. And he seems to keep a good poker face. That’d be a good skill to have in his line of work.”

“Yours, too.”

“I know. Then it says, quote

_Tom Mater former BF of Max not probable suspect._

“Next graph, pos suspects.”

_Three. Not Niki but someone in her posse, no names or further ideas. Someone mad at Niki, question mark. Niki exes whatever._

That’s what he wrote, exes whatever. Niki rehab question mark. Paragraph.

_Four. Someone at studio, unknown, pos disgruntled offended whatever.”_

She looked at Carmen. “I assume this means Jenny understands she may have offended someone at the studio?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Actors, crew, studio people. From what people have told me, Jenny was in extreme high diva mode there at the end. She could have offended just about anybody, for any reason whatsoever, from Aaron at the top of the pyramid down to the illegal immigrant from Tijuana who chopped the arugula for the craft services subcontractor. She seems to have enough self-knowledge about her behavior to know there were some possible suspects on the studio lot. Who’s next?”

“That’s it, just those four. Then it says quote,

_Problem, capital p, colon. JS fears vehicle tracked/bugged. BM tracked them to locations comma filmed JS/NS sex. How followed? Made appt. have car/house checked for bugs. JS gave times SM not there._

“Guess that means she didn’t want the house debugged when Shane was around, which makes sense. She’s keeping everything secret from everybody. Okay, then Harry skips a few lines then he writes, quote.

_Told JS text BM on cell, give burner number for all future. Tells JS now delete that text. JS does. JS gives BM phone number. Check comes back negative, BM using burner._

“So what it means is Harry checked the number Gabe was using, and it came back untraceable, from a burner. Harry skips a few lines, and there’s a new entry.

_Visit JS at home w/ Charlie, scan for vehicle bugs negative, scan for house/grounds bugs negative. Told JS BM prob use phys surveill to film sex @ beach._

“Used the ‘at’ symbol, sex at beach.”

_Q to JS: Any BM vids of JS sex w/SM? Neg._

“Okay, I think that means the blackmail material didn’t have anything new or current with Shane. It was all stuff with Niki. Which makes sense because the blackmail started before Jenny started up with Shane. Sorry, I know this is making you uncomfortable.”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get through this. What’s next?”

“An entry two days later.

_Surveil A. Pieszecki. House clean._

“Wow, I think it means he went into Alice’s apartment. Technically that’s breaking and entering, but of course he didn’t put that down on paper. Uh,

_Exam AP laptop. Found time-stamped files of Alice treatment going back 13 months. Outline, notes, research, etc. Appears Alice may be correct, JS stole treatment._

“Did NOT, he capitalized ‘not,’ did NOT tell JS.”

Carmen sighed. She had always suspected -- feared -- as much. “What else? Can you speed-read to the good stuff?”

“The good stuff. Hmmm. Okay. Uh. Checking in... checking in... heard anything?... no... Prelim checks Bette, Tina clean. Kit clean. Checking in--”

“I don’t think this is the good stuff I mentioned.”

“So impatient,” Lauren murmured, still reading as fast as she could. “Okay, here we go. Quote.

_Thursday, March 5, 2:40 pm Called JS, check in, advised spending 2 wks Ensenada time-share, back Sun night Mar 22, assured still working, have something that hope pan out in few days. Discussed strat_

\-- I guess that’s strategy --

_re tomorrow blackmail payment due. JS said has idea, wants to think about before tell_

“Oh, shit,” Carmen murmured. “Dammit, Jenny.”

“Tell me about it,” Lauren said. “I think it means she found the negatives upstairs, like you thought.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, back to Harry. Quote.

_Pressed JS, said just crazy idea, forget about. Don’t believe her. Worried._

“No shit.”

“That’s the last page of his handwritten notes. Then there’s several typed pages, which look like, yes, these are printouts of an e-mails he sent to himself. The headers say, quote,

_Update to Schecter, J., file. Sunday, Mar 8, 8:40 pm: Arrived Ensenada 3 pm. At 4:30 pm call from Burt K. re pos. ident BM. BK says surveill picked up white panel truck driveway @ 256 15th Street, app vacant house._

App must be ‘apparently.’ “

_Saw truck once before. CA plates. Running plate, slow on Sunday, find his DMV contact._

“Unquote. I think that means whoever this Burt guy is, he’s trying to find someone to run a plate on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve run into that, too, and it’s worse in football season. Paragraph. Quote.

_5:40 pm, at restaurant bar, BK calls. Plates regis Gabriel J. McCutcheon,_

“Holy shit,” Carmen whispered.

_Gabriel J. McCutcheon,58, address in Sonoma. BK says police have no wants, warrants._

_5:59 pm text JS, asked confirm GF/roommate is Shane McCutcheon._

_Immed reply, 6:01 pm, ‘Yes, why?’_

_Text to JS ‘Do u know a Gabriel J. McCutcheon?’_

_Immed reply, 6:03 pm, quote, ‘Asshole con man, Shane’s father. Why?’_

_Text reply, ‘His panel truck spotted in driveway at 256 15th street earlier today, possible vacant house behind you. Why asshole? If believe dangerous, call police. Advise immed._

_6:08 pm JS text me, ‘I think he is blkmailr.’_

_6:09 pm Text to JS, ‘Did you make BM payment Friday per deadline?’_

_6:011 pm JS reply, ‘No. Told BM had better deal, need to negotiate.’_

_6:14 pm, text to JS, ‘Advise situation very unstable, advise call police ASAP. Does Shane know her father is BM?’_

_6:16 pm,‘No. I didn’t either until now. Doesn’t matter. Makes easier negotiate w/him.’_

_6:18 pm, ‘Negotiate what? Strongly advise caution. Pls dont do something rash. If u wont call police I can have armed associate at your house within hour.’_

_6:20 pm, ‘No problem, I have under control.’_

_6:20 pm called JS, no answer._

_6:21, JS text, ‘Sorry too busy talk. Situation under control. Getting ready for party nextdoor. G McCutcheon not problem. S McCutcheon knows nothing. Will text you later.’_

Carmen put her head in her hands. “Oh, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny.”

_6:23 pm, Q to JS, ‘Where Shane?’_

_6:24 pm, JS: Not home yet. Y?_

_6:25 pm, ‘Curious u told her about father.’_

_6:26 pm, JS: ‘No point. Gotta go. Later.’_

Lauren looked up. “Shane got back around 6:30. She was pissed, and started looking for her coat with the letter in the pocket. Jenny was next door, at Bette and Tina’s, playing hostess and giving them the goodbye tape sometime around 7 p.m. They must have just missed each other. Then Jenny disappears. Shane is upstairs in the attic reading the letter. She goes next door and gets Tina. So where is Jenny?”

“Oh, my god,” Carmen whispered. “She went to confront Gabe.”

“Yes. Had to be. She wasn’t in either house, so she had to be somewhere nearby. So she cuts through the back fence--“

“--and Gabe is in the house, probably looking out the back window from the upstairs bedroom. Panel truck’s in the driveway. He may see Jenny coming”--

“--Jenny knocks on the front door--”

“No, Jenny pounds on the front door. ‘Open up, motherfucker, I know you’re in there.’ That’s what she’d do,” Carmen said.

“Right. Some time right around 8 or so, all the women are on Bette and Tina’s porch having a drink and that’s when they had this discussion about forgiving Jenny for all her bullshit. Even Shane has calmed down and mellowed at this point--”

“Because that’s what Shane does. Instead of being furious at Jenny, which she should be, she turns her anger inward. She wimps out. Plus she smokes a couple joints to mellow out. Then they all go into the media room and start watching the goodbye video.”

“So what’s Jenny doing between 7 and about 9 p.m., when she was killed? Talking to Gabe McCutcheon for two hours? Arguing with him ? Trying to reason with him?” Lauren asked. “That doesn’t sound reasonable to me, but you know her better than I do.”

“Let’s slow down and think about it. Jenny’s had an hour, from about 6 to 7, to think about it being Gabe. I withdraw my contention she pounded on his door, open up, motherfucker. She’s been busy finishing her tape and going next door to set it up, and so on. If she was raving, one of the girls would have noticed it. So she’s obviously calmed down enough that Bette or Tina and anyone else she talked to around 7 p.m. did notice anything. But the wheels are spinning inside her head.”

“Okay so far.”

“Then she goes to the empty house.”

“OK, wait right there. Let me ask, would you go in that house? Alone with your blackmailer?”

“Hell, no. But we’re coloring our opinions because we know he’s killed four people. Jenny didn’t know that at the time, and as far as we know he’s never killed anybody at that point. Jenny thinks he’s just this low-level con man and sexist, unfaithful asshole. And blackmailer. But more or less harmless, safety wise.”

“Plus, from what you’ve all told me, Jenny probably thinks she’s smarter than he is.”

“Yes. She’d think that. She’d probably be right, too.”

“She has contempt for him. She’s been dealing with asshole men for a good decade, right? She knows how to manipulate them. Charm them. She’s been dealing with Aaron Kornbluth and William Whatshisname at the studio. Snakes like Adele. Sociopaths like Niki and maybe half the prima donnas in the cast of her movie.”

“To say nothing of Tim, Marina, Bette, Tina, Max, et cetera.”

“And you.” Lauren couldn’t resist.

“Well, I’ve always been a pussycat,” Carmen said. “I’m a dream to work with.”

“Uh, huh,” Lauren said. “Back to reality. Jenny thinks she’s smarter than the average bear, and maybe she was. She was good at manipulation, you guys say. Now, tell me about Gabe, pre-murder Gabe.”

“We’ve been over that a dozen times. I only ever talked to him for maybe a minute, minute and a half. Whatever I know I got from Shane.”

“Yes, but you told me about him before we knew he was a murderer. Tell me again, now we know he’s the killer.”

“Okay, I see what you’re getting at. Can I think about it first?”

“Yes, take your time. I have a call to make.” She picked up her cell and punched in something on speed dial. “Marybeth? Yeah... yeah, we got a lot of stuff. I’ll brief you when we get back. But the reason I’m calling, can you get somebody started on a search warrant request, super rush. Harry gave Jenny a burner phone and there’s lots of text messages on it we need, super fast, especially from 7 to 9 p.m. on the night of the murder.” Lauren gave Marybeth the burner cell phone number as well as Harry’s number. “I’ve got Harry’s notes on their conversations up to 6:36 p.m. that night. I need everything after, both phones. And if we don’t have a BOLO out on Gabe McCutcheon, we need one... what? ... Hell if I know, everything west of the Mississippi, I guess. Like Shane, he’s from Texas. He’s lived in California and Oregon, that we know about ... so Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington state, Utah, Nevada. Fuck, throw in Montana and Utah, who knows. What? Yeah, we’re sure ....” Lauren turned to Carmen. “Marybeth wants to know our confidence level on Gabe.”

“Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine percent, rounded up,” Carmen said.

“Did you hear that?” Lauren asked. She listened for a moment, then laughed. “Marybeth wants to know if you’d consider a career change to the LA county sheriffs department.”

“And give up cruises to Hawaii, Australia, Mexico, and the Caribbean, on ships filled with lesbians?”

“Carmen asks, ‘have you lost your fucking mind?’” She listened. “Marybeth says she was duty-bound to try to recruit you.”

“I heard her. Can I work, say, 9, 9:30 to 4 Monday to Friday, weekends and holidays off, time and a half for overtime, medical and 401k or fully vested pension? Can I have a uniform and pistol allowance?” Carmen asked.

“Uh huh, uh huh .... Marybeth says back atcha, have you lost your mind? You can have everything except free bullets. You have to buy them yourself.”

“Can I beat up suspects?”

“Not while you’re on probation. It’s okay afterward,” Lauren said.

“Well, tell Marybeth the offer sounds attractive. Can I sleep on it?”

“Carmen says no fucking way,” Lauren said into the phone. She listened. “Right ... right.” She hung up.

“What did she say?”

“Don’t quit my day job. Search warrant going out as soon as possible. BOLO going out in five minutes. We’re briefing her, Jack and ADA Collins at 8 a.m. She said to bring Shane.”

“At 8 a.m.? That’s not going to be easy.”

“Would it help to bribe her with breakfast first?”

“No. But we might catch a break if she’s going to be up all night fucking somebody, and hasn’t gone to bed yet.”

“Give her a call and a head’s up while I get the contact information from Mrs. Hooker on that operative Harry hired who saw Gabe’s van in the driveway.”


	29. A Woman Scorned

As they left Palos Verdes and headed back downtown, Lauren checked her messages as she drove, speaking on her Bluetooth when she needed to reply. Carmen looked out the window. When Lauren had stopped using her cell, Carmen didn’t notice.

Lauren glanced over quickly once or twice, and let Carmen work on whatever she was working on.

“You about ready?” Lauren finally asked.

“Huh? What?”

“I said, are you about ready to tell me what you’re thinking about. You’ve been having an out-of-body experience for about ten minutes now.”

“I have? Oh, yeah, I guess. I was thinking about Shane.”

“How so?”

“I was wondering what it felt like to Shane to have a cold-blooded murderer for a father. Somebody who drowned her friend and lover. To have every cop west of the Mississippi on the lookout for him. To be the daughter of a murderer. To be one of the key people trying to find him, get him arrested, convicted and sent to Death Row. I think, what if it was my father or my step-father, you know, or somebody else in my family. And it's not one murder, it's now four. That’s a lot of weight to carry.”

“Yeah,” was all Lauren could say.

“Then I think about the families of the mass shooters, like Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, that guy in Las Vegas at the concert. Sometimes they are gun nuts themselves, the relatives, I mean. And sometimes they just know that the relative is a little out of whack, and they aren’t too surprised when he goes nuts and kills fifteen people. They suspected he was dangerous, but there was nothing they could do about it. And then other times it’s a total shock. They had no idea he was planning something.”

“Gabe McCutcheon doesn’t seem to fit anything like that, though,” Lauren said.

“Can I ask you a question? When you worked homicide, how did the relatives of the murderers feel? Did you ever work a mass shooter?”

“No, not exactly. I worked a gang drive-by, three dead, two more shot-up. But that’s not the same thing, either. Most of the homicides I worked with Marybeth, I guess the relatives’ reactions ran the gamut,” Lauren said. “They felt horror, some of them. A lot of self-protective denial. Disbelief. Shock. Not my little boy. Not my friend. Not my father. Not my neighbor. Once in a blue moon you’d get somebody who said, ‘Yeah, I’m not surprised. He was a bastard. I knew he was going to do something one day.’” She drove for a minute. “Here’s something I sometimes think about. What’s worse, being the relative of the victim who got shot and killed, or the relative of the shooter who did it, and then he either went to jail for 20 years, or got shot himself. Two people dead and two families destroyed, and often more than two families, but is one family more hurt than the other? I’ve decided you just can’t tell. Some families are completely shattered. Some find a way to heal, or deal with it, and eventually move on. There’s some people even just blank it out, like it never happened. Grieving is hard enough, but how do you grieve for a family member who just killed seven people at his workplace and then got shot dead by police? Shane is going to be far different, because her family, such as it is, barely even exists. There’s no real family there to shatter, no grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, except her brother, who she hardly knows any better than she knows Gabe. There’s just you guys, her friends, and herself.”

“It’s gotta be harder on her than most people,” Carmen said. “Shane is hypersensitive. Whatever her reaction is, it’s going to be, like, ten times worse for her than for other people.”

“I can’t read her like you can,” Lauren said. “What do you think she’s feeling?”

“Anger. Hatred. Which is funny, because she’s not good at either of them. She's got less anger and hate in her than just about anybody I ever met. I doubt she feels any embarrassment because she’s related to Gabe. He’s just DNA, a total stranger to her until a week before the wedding, and he went back to DNA right afterward. He’s basically a very distant acquaintance she once met for an hour or two, but on the other hand also somebody who hurt her, repeatedly. A serial abuser, in a way. An abuser from afar. Is that even a thing? Well, that’s what he was. A long-distance, far-away DNA-related abuser. And then a murderer.”

“So how’s she processing it?”

“I don’t know. There’s lots of stuff we can’t talk about to each other. We’re on thin ice like ninety-five percent of the time with each other.”

“Everybody can see that.”

“Is it that obvious? Yeah, I guess it is. And something this big, she’s going to take a long, long time working on it. Mostly not working on it, more likely. When it’s all over, we’re going to have to keep an eye on her so she doesn’t go off on a drug-and-alcohol three-week bender. That's how she deals with this kind of stuff. Self-medication.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What I worry about is, when it gets to the crunch, can we count on her?”

“No. You can’t. You need to know that right away. She won’t help Gabe, if that’s what you mean, but I don’t think you do. She'd be the last one to help him. But if it gets to the crunch, whatever it may be, it’ll be just you and me. Shane’s a coward. She’ll freeze, or she’ll run. Or both. You need to know that.”

Lauren said nothing for a while. “My turn to ask a question. You own a gun?”

“No. I’m not allowed to have one on the ship, and it would be really silly anyway. I spend three-quarters of my life on board now, so I’m not even home all that much. When I am home I’m usually working a club, and they have their own security guys. And it’s hard to carry a Glock 19 when you’re wearing DJ booty shorts or leading a yoga class. I mean, where would I put it? No, don’t answer that. And in the Castro in San Francisco, the definition of gang violence is when two queens scratch each other’s eyes out. But the other answer you want is, yes, I know how to shoot a gun. Which brings up an painful story.”

There was silence. “Well, Jesus Christ, you’re not going to stop there,” Lauren said. “Want me to pull over and beat you senseless, speaking of pain?”

Carmen laughed. “No, I was just replaying it in my head. It was one day when Shane and I were together. She had cheated on me with Cheri Jaffe, and then I cheated on her with Robin.”

“That’s your San Diego won’t-come-out-of-the-closet Robin?”

“That’s the one. Anyway, I had been giving Shane grief off and on for a while because she never talked about herself, never told me much of anything, and hardly ever asked me anything. So this one day she was in a pretty good mood, and she says tell me something about yourself. And I said I shot a gun once, it was loud. And Shane says she shot one once, too, and what else have I done? And then for no good reason except maybe revenge I told her I had cheated on her. And then, you know, it all went to hell. She pretended not to care and wouldn’t talk to me, giving me the silent treatment, and then we were arguing and then we had fantastic make-up sex in the shower. That’s how we finally got past the cheating-with-Cheri-Jaffe thing.”

Lauren said nothing for a while. “Not a helluva lot about guns in that story.”

“Mmmm, nope, guess not.”

“Any idea when Shane shot the gun?”

“No. But the odds are about ninety-nine percent she was fucking somebody who owned a gun. Maybe a cop, maybe some sort of security person, who knows. But somebody who had a gun and they went out to a range somewhere and the woman showed Shane how to shoot. They probably went through a box of ammo and then fucked their brains out in the car in the parking lot, and Shane never saw her again.”

“What about you? Where did you learn to shoot?”

“I told you my Uncle Mike worked at movie studios as an electrician. He knew all the other backstage technical people, and that included the armorers' sections. Some studios have their own in-house props departments that handle weapons, but many of them just hire companies that specialize in weapons. Production assistants like me call them up and we say, ‘We’re filming an episode of _NCIS Los Angeles_ or _Life_ or whatever, and Sarah Shahi needs a Glock 19 and this week’s bad guy needs a SIG-Sauer P229R. And then you discuss whether they need rubber guns or real ones firing blanks, and how many shots, and what kind of training does the actor need, and you hire a trainer to work with the actor, and you hire an armorer who actually has on-site custody of the guns. They even have practice ranges if your actor needs one. Hollywood studios all have extensive props departments and any kind of shoot that’s a cop show or a military thing has all kinds of gun stuff going on in the production department. What kind of finish do they want, blued, chromed, fancy, plain, a pimp’s gun, a soldier’s, sniper scope, and a thousand other details. So pretty often not only do the actors get training, but us production assistants are there when they get trained, and sometimes we do, too, so we know what we’re doing. Anyway, one day Uncle Mike was working a job when they had this well-known quick-draw guy coming in to train some actors in a cowboy movie, and he brought my sisters and me to work so we could watch. It was terrific, and we met the actors and the quick-draw guy, and my sisters were flirting with the actors, you know, they were 18 or 19, and I was only 15--”

“--And not interested in guy actors--”

“—And not interested in guy actors, but there were a couple of dance hall girls on the set, plus some wardrobe and makeup women who ... well, never mind. Anyway, you know I’ve always loved cowboy movies. So, yeah, one way or another I’ve had all kinds of experience being around guns, and shooting them on gun ranges. I can tell an AK-47 from an AK-56, because it is lighter and has a hooded front sight, and I can tell an AK-47 just from the sound. A Glock 19 is shorter than the Glock 17, and has a pistol grip, so it’s better for concealed carry. More than half of cops who carry Glocks carry the Glock 22, which has a 15-round, .40 caliber, double-stack magazine, metal slide but polymer frame for light weight. I know all that because I worked on some cop shows. I sometimes get annoyed when I’m watching an older Western and everybody’s got Colt Peacemakers, they’re just such cliché guns in movies, and they weren't in use until 1873 and the movie is set, like, in the 1850s or something.”

“I bet you’re just a ton of fun on a movie date.”

“Oh, I am! But afterward, if you know what I mean. Not so much between the opening credits and the last kiss. Anyway, that’s how I know a lot about guns. What about you? How good are you?”

“How good am I? We’re still talking about guns, right? I’d say I’m pretty good. I’ve entered some police shooting contests from time to time, finished, like, 14th. The cops who win those things just practice, practice, practice, way more than I ever wanted to. You have to be really dedicated, it has to be your job and your hobby and your lifestyle. Me, I practice enough to qualify and get by, and maybe ten percent more, but after that, I’d rather lay on the beach, read a good lesbian sex novel, and eat Tex-Mex in the barrio.”

“Wow, me, too!”

“Yeah, but you also love being a DJ, and going on cruises and having hot, sweaty monkey sex.”

“Don’t you?”

“Me? First, I’d make a terrible DJ. Second, I’ve never been on a cruise. Third, um, well, I don’t get all that much hot, sweaty monkey sex.”

“Well, no wonder. You have all these ethical scruples about being a highly professional law enforcement person.”

“I know. It’s a bitch being me.”

“So why haven’t you ever been on a cruise?”

“Oh, lots of reasons. Never had all that much time off, and you have to book a cruise months in advance. Never had anyone to go with. Always had something else to do.”

“Ah, I understand. That’s four reasons, which I would have to rank as bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, and bullshit. Hope I’m not offending you.”

Lauren laughed. “No, you’re right.”

“Remember that detective in Bakersfield? He was away on a cruise the week Max was murdered. Marybeth and her husband went on a cruise to Alaska. And I’ve heard rumors there were things called ‘singles cruises,’ where you don’t even have to go with someone, because the ship is filled with other singles. I’ve even heard there are lesbian singles cruises.”

“I’m amazed. Do they have hot, sweaty lesbian sex on those cruises?”

“I have no idea,” Carmen said, “because like you I am a consummate, highly professional employee, a DJ and cruise entertainment director like Julie on the _Love Boat_ , and am not allowed to have sexual congress with passengers.”

“Sexual congress?”

‘It’s a technical term of art we professionals use.”

“I see. Good to know. These professional ethics things are a dilemma.”

“Not if we moved out to San Fernando Valley and became porn actresses.”

“Aren’t we a little old for that?”

“Not if we become MILFs.”

“Somehow I don’t see myself as a MILF,” Lauren said. Carmen was debating how to reply as they pulled into the LASD parking lot.

* * *

Marybeth was on the phone but waved them into her office to sit down. She finished her call. "So? Progress?"

"Yes, a lot," Lauren said. "We've established that Jenny was told about three hours before she was murdered that Gabe McCutcheon was the probable blackmailer, and that he'd been seen at the house behind Shane and Jenny's house. Harry and his wife were in Ensenada on vacation, but Harry had a field guy doing legwork. He's the one who saw the white panel truck in the driveway behind Shane and Jenny. Jenny and Harry were texting, and Jenny claimed to have everything under control. Harry told her to be careful, don't do anything dumb, call the police if necessary to get Gabe out of the house behind her. It seems pretty obvious she ignored that. We can't account for her whereabouts from about 7:15 or 7:20 p.m. to shortly after 9 p.m. when she was killed, but we think she went to confront Gabe, possibly to negotiate a deal, exchange the blackmail tapes for the stolen movie negatives. We think she discovered they were in the attic, but we don't know it for a fact. We also know Harry gave her a burner phone, which we never found and until now didn't know existed. I'm going to get a warrant for the burner phone’s records, but Harry kept a pretty good log of his contacts with Jenny, so we know what they said. Sometime after 9 p.m. Jenny went off the upper deck, and Gabe rolled her into the pool. He got her burner phone, and we think that's how he found out about Jenny texting Harry back and forth. So Gabe sees his identity is blown, so he goes to Mexico, finds Harry and kills him. The fishing boat captain is collateral damage."

"Good stuff, but still circumstantial," Marybeth said. "Anything come back on the BOLO for Gabe?"

"No, nothing yet. I'm not surprised. He's really in the wind. He's got four murders under his belt and a two-year head start, although he probably doesn't know we're on to him."

"Why is Carmen frowning?" Marybeth asked.

"Maybe we're looking for the wrong person," Carmen said.

Lauren glanced at her. "Spicy Wan Kenobi, Yoda moments she has. Having one now, she is."

"I see that," Marybeth said. "Will she tell us what she means?"

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Carmen said.

"Has it always been this difficult working with her?" Marybeth asked Lauren. "Does she do this often?"

"From time to time, yes. I've learned how to deal with it," Lauren said. "But in her defense, she comes up with some good stuff. In a way she's like Shane, you just have to let her work it out. But she's way faster than Shane. By orders of magnitude."

"I'm in the room, you know. I can hear you," Carmen said.

"So who got scorned?" Marybeth asked.

"Carla."

"Who's Carla?"

"Gabe's wife. Or maybe ex-wife. She was his wife when they came to Whistler for the wedding. Gabe swindled ten grand from Helena and took off with some bimbo he met in the bar. Carla went to pieces, and dumped her son, Shay, on Shane, then from what I heard she went back into drugs. She and Gabe were both addicts, way back. I've never even been sure she was Shay's biological birth mother, and I never talked to Shane about it. But what I mean is, it may be easier for us to find Carla, and maybe Carla has some idea where Gabe is. Or at least she may know something about him that may help find him. And maybe she’s motivated to burn his sorry ass."

Marybeth looked at Lauren. “I see what you mean about her moments.”

“I told you she was a keeper.”

“Yeah, you did, and we offered her a job but she wanted weekends off and to telecommute from the Libido deck of the S.S. _Sappho_.”

“It’s the Lido deck,” Carmen said to Marybeth, “and I thought you were the one who didn’t like comedy bantering.”

“I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Now, go on, get out of here. Go find Carla.”

Lauren gave Marybeth a mock salute and headed down the hall. Carmen paused at the door. “Libido deck,” she said. “That was a good one.”

“I, too, have my moments,” Marybeth said.

* * *

Lauren was already seated in the conference room, logging in to her laptop, when Carmen got there. Carmen looked at her watch. “It’s 5:30. Want to come over for dinner?”

“Gee, as much as I love your mom’s cooking, I think I have to say no. But thanks. I’ve got a ton of stuff to catch up on. First, start tracking down Carla. Then checking my warrants and BOLOs. I’ll catch something a little later.”

“Bullshit,” Carman said, but smiling. “You’re gonna be here ‘til midnight, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, probably,” Lauren said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Anything I can do to help? I’ll stay, if you’ve got something for me to do.”

“No, it’s all cop stuff. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Okay, I’ll catch you later, then,” Carmen said.

But Lauren was already deep into her computer. “Huh? Yeah, okay,” she murmured. She never saw Carmen leave.

Carmen went home all right, but she was back an hour later. She stood in the doorway of the conference room, holding a large cardboard box, waiting for Lauren to look up. “Ahem, cough, cough,” she finally said.

“Hey, I thought you left.”

“I did. I’m back.” Carmen set the box on one of the few bare spots on the conference table. “Go ahead, ask me what’s in the box.”

“What’s in the box?”

“Mom’s Yucatan chicken, your favorite, four helpings. Two for you, two for me. Tortillas I can zap in the microwave to warm them up. Mom’s Mexican rice, your favorite. Plates, napkins, silverware. I thought about a bottle of wine and a couple of candles, but I thought it would send the wrong message, so there’s a couple of Dos Equis in there instead. Anyway, you’re working, so I didn’t want you to get too, you know. Frisky.”

“Sleepy, you mean,” Lauren said. “Don’t tell me your mom made all this up in the last hour.”

“Oh, hell no,” Carmen said. “She started marinating the chicken yesterday. Oh, there’s pickled red onions, scallions and lime slices for garnish.”

“Jesus,” Lauren muttered. “You really are a keeper. Shane’s a fucking idiot.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Carmen said, picking up files and clearing space for them to eat. She began laying out plates, napkins, and silverware. She left to zap the tortillas and the Mexican rice –the chicken was packed in a thermal bag that kept it warm – and returned a minute later. She began serving up the dinner.

“Oh, my god,” Lauren whispered. The chicken was red-orange, thanks to the marinade and sauce and had been barbecued, so the skin was crispy and had barbecue char and grill marks. The conference room took on the faintly citrus smell of oranges that were in the sauce. Plus the smell of the chicken, And tortillas. And Mexican rice. And garnishes. Carmen twisted the tops off two bottles of beer and set one in front of Lauren. “You’re gonna need this,” she said.

“Close the door,” Lauren said. “Half the night shift in the building will be in here if they smell this.”

They ate silently for a few minutes, because the food was just too good to talk. Lauren moaned several times. “You okay over there?” Carmen asked.

“Just having multiple orgasms,” Lauren said. “I’ll try to be quieter.” A few minutes later she handed her empty plate to Carmen. “Do me again,” she said. Carmen laughed, and gave her the second helping of chicken, rice and tortillas, and re-filled her own plate, too.

When they finally started to slow down eating, Lauren asked, “Back when you and Jenny were a thing, and you and Shane, did they get to eat your mom’s food like I do? Did they gain 20, 30 pounds while they were dating you?”

“Jenny liked my mom’s cooking okay, but she was never that big a fan of Tex-Mex and Southwest cooking. A nice Jewish girl from the Midwest. Shane loves it, as you know. Born and raised in Texas. But they never put on too much weight because I kept both of them on strict regimens of vigorous exercise.”

“Fucking like rabbits. I should have guessed.”

“I prefer to think of our workouts as healthy, invigorating cardio,” Carmen said. “Want another beer? Foreplay? Slap-and-tickle on the conference table?”

“You have noticed we have an entire wall of glass windows,” Lauren said. “You have noticed people walking by from time to time, right? Yes, I’ll take another beer, but it’s my last one. How many did you bring?”

“Just four. Were you making any progress while I was out?”

“No, not much. Just checking things and doing my day report. Nothing new on the BOLO, like we told Marybeth. I was just about ready to start on Carla.”

“Well, if I can’t help with the police work at least I can keep you supplied with coffee, food and neck massage, Tylenol, mopping the sweat from your brow. Be right back.”

Carmen took the carton of dinner debris to her car, stopped in the break room to get two cups of coffee, and reappeared in the conference room. She handed one cup to Lauren and sat down to begin reading through the reports and files for the fourth or fifth time.

* * *

At 11:23 p.m. Lauren smiled at her computer screen. Slowly she stood up, linked her arms over her head, slowly twisting her torso and neck, working out the kinks and cricks. She looked over at Carmen, who was asleep, her head cradled in her arms on the conference table. Her mouth was slightly open and she was breathing deeply. Not snoring ... but almost. Lauren allowed herself a few moments of lewd thoughts and speculation, then snapped herself out of it. She walked over to Carmen, leaned down, shook her shoulder.

“Huh? Wha?” Carmen sat up in her chair, rubbed her eyes. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Sorry I fell asleep. What’s up?”

“Time to go home. We have a big day tomorrow. Road trip.”

“Oh. Okay.” It took Carmen a minute to wake up all the way. She frowned. “You found her.”

“Yup. Pack an overnight bag. We’re going to Oregon.”

* * *

“This better be good,” Marybeth said, waking from a sound sleep to answer her cell phone.

“What are you wearing?” Lauren asked.

“Very funny. Wait a minute.” Marybeth sat up, turned to sit on the side of her bed, turned on the lamp by her bedside. The “What are you wearing?” line told her it wasn’t an emergency, no one was dead, so don’t trigger the adrenaline rush. She glanced at the time: 11:44 p.m. She glanced back at her husband, sound asleep, oblivious. That was often the life of a law enforcement spouse. “Okay, I’m awake.”

“I found Carla McCutcheon a few minutes ago. She lives in Oregon City, same town as when Shane visited them. It’s a suburb of Portland. I want to fly up first thing in the morning.”

“Okay,” Marybeth said. “You still in the office?”

“Yes. You know what my next question is.”

“You want to take Carmen along. And what about Shane?”

“Yes and yes. Who pays for their airfare and travel expenses. Room, food.”

“We do,” Marybeth said without hesitation. “It’s a multiple murder case. Multiple jurisdictions. They’ve both met Carla, they may have insights and questions to ask her. Anyway, that’s how I’ll sell it upstairs, so don’t worry about it. Just put everything on your expenses. It’s late, but you still better call them.”

“I’ll call Shane. She’s a night owl, anyway. Carmen just left here. I sent her home, told her to pack a bag.”

“Carmen was there all night, too?”

“Yes.”

“Doing what?”

“Reviewing files. Keeping me company, mostly. Fetching dinner, keeping me primed with caffeine. Sleeping.”

“She really is a keeper, isn’t she? Okay, what do you think about Shane coming along.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m not sure she’ll want to talk to Carla. Carmen thinks there’s still some bad blood between them.”

“It may be tough on her, but I’d still like her to go with you, if she’ll do it. Tell me what you found about Carla.”

“She has a rap sheet in Oregon, some petty stuff, minor drug-dealing and using. She’s been in and out of rehabs and jail a couple of times, all for drugs, starting when she was a teenager, and then later when she hooked up with Gabe. He did some scams and grifting, and she’s named in a couple of them as his associate. They beat the grifting charges but both got nailed for drugs, mostly petty stuff. It looks like she finally got clean a few years ago, and is now a drug counselor with a rehab outfit in Oregon City.”

“She got clean, finally? That sounds promising, like she’ll cooperate.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Lauren said. “It’s mainly a question of whether she knows anything that would help.”

“Yes. Okay, call Shane, go to Portland. It’ll take you most of the day just to get there, rent a car, check in with both Portland and Oregon City police before you even get to Carla. Sounds like an overnighter. I'll call ahead in the morning, tell them you're coming. I’ll see you when I see you. Check in as necessary.”

“Will do.”

“When you call Shane, just don’t ask her what she’s wearing.”

* * *

Lauren called Shane and after a couple of rings it went to voicemail. Lauren was leaving a message when Shane called her back. Apparently she wasn’t wearing anything.

“It’s me,” Shane said. “I didn’t answer because I was in the shower. What’s wrong? It’s almost midnight.”

“Sorry, not an emergency, nothing wrong. I didn’t mean to get you worried.”

“Oh. Okay. Just a minute,” Shane said. Lauren heard her talk to somebody in the room. “I have to take this,” Shane said to whoever it was, “throw me that towel.” There was a pause, either Shane or the other person leaving the room. “Sorry, I’m back.”

Yes, and not alone, Lauren thought, and equally predictably naked as well as wet. “No problem. I just got off the phone with Marybeth. I found Carla. She’s working as some kind of drug rehab counselor in Oregon City. That’s where they lived when you went up there, right? Anyway, I’m going up there first thing in the morning to talk to her, see if she knows anything about Gabe’s whereabouts. Carmen’s coming, and Marybeth would like you to come, too, if you can and if you’re willing. I’d like it, too. I know you and Carla aren’t on good terms, but you knew her, at least a little bit. And you’re the one with the great Spidey senses, my reliable lie and bullshit detector. And you know were they lived, back when you visited them. I’d like to check out that residence. The department’s paying, don’t worry about expenses.”

There was a long silence on the phone. Lauren didn’t worry about it. Shane was processing.

“Fuck,” Shane finally said. “Okay, I’m in. When are we coming back?”

“Probably day after tomorrow.”

“I’ve got something tomorrow night but I’ll have to cancel it. Did you find anything about Shay?”

“Shay?”

“My brother. Step-brother. Whatever.”

“Oh. No, I wasn’t really looking, but you’re right, I should be. Good call. What’s the last time you talked to him?”

“The day that asshole took him back away from me. I tried a couple times over the years to find him, but I’m not good at it. I never found out anything more about where he was. And I didn’t want any contact with the asshole.”

“I understand. I’ll start on it. Meanwhile, I’m going to start booking our flight. I’ll text you with details when I get something. I know it’s late, but we can both get more sleep on the plane. I’d like to get to Oregon City as soon as we can.”

“Okay. See you in the morning,” Shane said.

“Good night,” Lauren said.

“Roger, ten-four, copy that, over and out,” Shane said.

Lauren laughed and hung up.

* * *

The first flight Lauren could get them left at 10:39 a.m. She picked up Shane and Carmen so they only needed to take one car to LAX. Because Lauren didn’t want to go through the hassle and paperwork of carrying her gun on board -- especially since she had no good reason to do so, and because they didn’t have time – she had to put her overnight bag in checked luggage because it contained the hardened, locked case for her gun, empty clips, and the ammo she took out of the clips. They all had TSA Pre-Check, and a friendly TSA agent and Lauren’s badge got them through quickly. Lauren got lucky on seating and booked seats as far forward as possible, so they boarded early, sat three across, and all fell asleep before the plane pulled away from the terminal. It was a two-and-a-half-hour flight and when they got off the plane they were starved.

“I’m was hoping to get down to Oregon City as soon as possible, but fuck it, I could eat a horse,” Lauren said.

“I’m up for a palomino, maybe an Arabian on rye, Swiss and spicy mustard,” Carmen said.

“Spicy mustard. Who didn’t see that coming,” Lauren said. “Let’s grab something fast.” They saw Kenny and Zuke’s deli near the security checkpoint at the juncture of Concourse B and C, and baggage claim was right downstairs. It was nearly 2 p.m. and there was no major lunch crowd. They wolfed down sandwiches and Carmen used Lauren’s credit card to get their rental car while Lauren got her bag from baggage claim. Twenty minutes later they were on the 205 headed south, Lauren at the wheel and Carmen reading her Google map directions.

Carmen glanced over her shoulder at Shane, who was riding in the back behind Lauren. “You okay?” she asked quietly.

“It’s gotta be done,” Shane said. “I’ll survive.” She turned to look out the window. A minute later she said, “Carmen?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

Shane shrugged. Typically inarticulate. “Worrying about me, I guess.”

This was one of those invisible, wordless conversations that Shane could have with no one but Carmen.

_I know this is hard for you, dealing with Carla after she dumped Shay on you. I know it hurt when Gabe took him away. I know you are conflicted about Carla._

_Thank you. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I don’t have to do this alone. I don’t think I could do this alone._

_Lauren’s here, too, you know._

_I know, and that’s good. But she doesn’t get me like you do. She doesn’t know. How it hurts. She doesn’t know ... me._

_She knows. You just don’t know she knows._

_Uh ... okay, I guess. I know you guys have talked about me._

_Yes, of course we have._

_Does it bother you? About me and her? Way back ... when Harvey died? And ... afterward._

_No, of course not. That was a decade before we ever met._

_Uh, okay. Good._

_I know what’s bothering you. What you want to ask. Go ahead. It’s all right. You can ask._

_No, it’s none of my business._

_Right. It isn’t. But it’s driving you crazy. You think about it all the time. And here’s what you don’t want to ask, here’s the question you don’t want to –_

_Carmen, I’m not asking._

_Yes, you are. Don’t lie to me. No, change that. Don’t lie to yourself. The answer you are so fucking of afraid isn’t what you thought. Here it is. No. We aren’t. We haven’t. We want to. But we haven’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever, even. Yes, we’ve thought about it. Are you fucking crazy? Of course we have. But she won’t. She got burned once. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why she won’t. Maybe 15 years ago she slept with somebody and got burned. I don’t know. I’m not inside her head, like I am inside yours. But no. We haven’t._

_Okay. I shouldn’t ... it’s none of my business._

_Stop saying that. It doesn’t mean anything._

_I’m sorry._

_Stop apologizing. You are who you are. I accepted that a long time ago._

_I ... I just never know what to say._

_I know. It’s not a problem. Let it go._

Lauren drove in silence. She knew there was a silent conversation taking place; it was like eavesdropping on two strangers speaking a foreign language, a language so foreign you couldn’t even tell which one it might be. And she had to keep her eyes on the road, so there was no reading faces, no reading body language. But it was all right. She didn’t have need to know.

* * *

Carla waited for them in the meeting room. There was a ring of folding chairs and at one end, near the door, there was a table with a full coffee station on it, coffee, hot water, tea bags, sugar, artificial sugar, powdered creamer, bottled water. Whatever it took to get you through the meeting.

They had checked in at the desk of the rehab center, where a bearded young man at the desk told them Carla’s session still had a few minutes, and would they mind waiting? He said Carla had told him they were coming and were expected. Lauren didn’t flash her badge; it didn’t seem necessary. There was a bench across from the young man and his reception desk, but it was only large enough for two. Lauren and Carmen sat; Shane was too wired to sit. She stood, and read everything on the bulletin board. Menus, schedules, whatever. She had no idea what she was reading. The noise level inside her head was about a 4.

Lauren had called Carla that morning, a conversation as full of long silences as anything that passed between Shane and Carmen. Lauren explained who she was, and that she wanted to talk to Carla about Gabe’s whereabouts. Carla said she had no idea. She could have asked Lauren what this was about, what had Gabe done now? But she didn’t ask, and Lauren understood. She asked if she could come talk to her, and bring along two people she knew, Shane and Carmen. There was a long silence. “All right,” Carla finally said. “Is 4 o’clock all right? I have group from 3 to 4.”

Yes, Lauren said.

After a few minutes Carla’s session ended, and a dozen people came out of the room, some talking quietly, some not at all. They ranged from 19 or 20 to mid-40s. Men and women. Some seemingly “normal,” whatever that means, and some a little ... stressed. They were a cross section of America. Several nodded and smiled at Lauren, Shane and Carmen as they passed by. Lauren and Carmen could tell one or two of them were wondering who they were, which one was the addict. Most likely the anxious one reading the bulletin board. One young man looked at Lauren and made her as a cop, just as she made him. Sometimes people just know things, just as the hunted recognizes the hunter.

Carla stood when they entered. “The Three Amigos,” she said.

“Carla, I’m Detective Lauren Hancock,” Lauren said, coming forward to shake hands.

“Hey, Shane,” Carla said. “You’re looking well. Better than the last time, huh?” Carla was trying to be friendly.

“Carla,” Shane said quietly. No shaking hands, no hugs. Carla understood.

“Hi, Carmen. Long time no see.”

Carmen came forward, smiling, and shook Carla’s hand. “Yeah, it’s been a while.”

“You guys have a good trip up? There’s coffee, tea and water on the table. Help yourselves. Come on, don’t be shy. I need a little caffeine myself.” She went to the table, took a paper cup from a stack, and poured coffee into it from a tall coffee urn. “We go through this stuff here like you wouldn’t believe.” She had her back to them, putting powdered creamer and a packet of Sweet-and-Low into her cup. “So. What did the son-of-a-bitch do now?” She turned to face them. “Bad? Bad bad? Really bad bad bad?”

“He murdered four people,” Lauren said.

Carla’s hand froze, the cup halfway to her mouth. She lowered the cup, walked to one of the folding chairs in the circle, and sat down. Carmen went to the coffee station, poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Shane, who hadn’t moved. Shane seemed to awaken, and went to put creamer and sweetener in it. Carmen poured another one and handed it to Lauren after she’d put creamer and sweetener in it. Then she made one for herself. Lauren sat one seat away from Carla, turned toward her. Shane sat across from them on the other side of the circle. Carmen sat down next to her.

They could all see Carla was processing it. “I was prepared for bad bad. Even really bad bad bad. But not that.” She looked at Shane and Carmen, confused. “You two are here ... but I can’t think why. Is it Shay? Is he all right? Did Gabe ... ”

“So far as we know, it has nothing to do with Shay,” Lauren said. “We don’t even know where he is. Do you?”

Carla shook her head no. “I haven’t seen him since ... since that night. When I left him at Shane’s.”

“Why not?” Lauren asked. “You’re his mother.”

Carla smiled sadly. “No,” she said quietly. “No, I’m not.”

Carmen caught her breath. Shane looked at Carla, her mouth half open. She was frowning.

“I’m sorry, Shane. I know we all lied to you. Even Shay, maybe. That part’s complicated. But the lie had nothing to do with you.”

“You better start at the beginning of all that,” Lauren said.

Carla nodded. “I’d known Gabe off and on for, oh, 18, 20 years, something like that. We did drugs, way back when. He wasn’t the one who got me hooked, but he kinda took over from the motherfucker who did. Over the years, we had this thing going, you know, shacking up, then breaking up, all the usual drama. Anyway, he taught me how to run scams. That’s what we did, we were a grifter team. That is, when we were together, and straight enough to pull our act. Usually what happened was we’d pull off a scam, we’d have some money to buy drugs and one day he’d be gone, out fucking somebody else. I really had no idea. Didn't much care. Then he’d be back, we’d straighten up a little, pull another couple scams. Rinse, repeat. So anyway, one day he shows up, and he’s got this kid with him. Shay. He was four years old. Who Shay’s birth mother was I never knew and Gabe wouldn’t talk about it. Anyway, I started shacking up with him, because Gabe needed this mother figure, and so I became Shay’s quote unquote mother. We never told Shay to lie or anything, but we just told him to call me mom, I was his new mom, blah blah blah, and he believed it because he had no way of telling the difference. And a big part of the scam was just welfare stuff, getting assistance from the city and the state, you know, whatever we could. Food stamps, all that kinda thing. It helped to say I was his mother. Gabe knew a guy, and we got a forged Oregon birth certificate, me as the birth mother, and Gabe as my husband, because schools always want to see birth certificates. The thing is, I liked Shay, and I did my best to be a good stepmom. I think – no, I know. He liked me, too. I don’t know, maybe ‘love’ is too strong a word. Maybe not. Anyway, me being his mom was much more than the scam part.”

She took a sip of her coffee. “So anyway, one day I was reading this magazine, and there was this article about Shane opening this beauty salon in a skateboard shop. All hip and trendy and pitched at young people, you know? The article made it sound real cool. And the name McCutcheon, right? So I showed it to Gabe, like, you know, hey, here’s a coincidence. This woman has the same name as you, and her name’s almost like Shay, too. And he looks at it and says, ‘Yeah, that’s my daughter, from back in Texas. I didn’t know she moved to California.’ So I say, ‘So she’s Shay’s sister?’ and he says, “No, half-sister.’ And at first he seems uninterested, and then he picks the article up and starts reading. And the wheels start turning in his head. He says, ‘I bet a business like that generates a lot of cash. Rich hippy kids at the beach.’”

Shane’s eyes were closed. Carmen put her hand on Shane’s arm, gently.

“You’re saying Gabe targeted Shane from the start, as a potential scam victim. He smelled money.”

Carla shrugged. “It’s a little more complicated than that. But yes, that’s part of who he is. And as much as I hate that motherfucker, he did have some feeling for Shay, for his son. Gabe isn’t 100 percent evil, just 80, 90 percent.” She took another sip of her coffee. “I don’t think he was targeting Shane, exactly. But the skateboard shop. According to the article it seemed to be run by this young hippy kid entrepreneur, and it looked like a cash business. Bunch of young people, stoners, skateboarders. I mean, talk about a flock of sheep just waiting to be fleeced, you know? That’s how Gabe thought. He had this sixth sense about who was vulnerable. So, anyway, nothing happened for a couple days, and one day out of the blue he comes home from work and he says, ‘I called Shane today. She says she wants to come up and meet us.’ I said something like, okay, but are you planning something? And he says no, he just wants to meet her.”

“That’s not what he told me when we met outside the coffee shop,” Shane says. “He said he was trying to decide whether to just stand me up. Like he wasn’t sure he wanted to meet me.”

“Uh-huh,” Carla said. “And you were thinking about standing him up, right? So he read that in you, and then he adopted it, told you he felt the same way, right? Fed your own doubt back at you. Mirroring, although mirroring is usually unconscious. That’s what he’s good at. So now you two have something in common, you’re both ambivalent about meeting each other. Only of course it was a lie on his part. He's not the type to get cold feet.”

Shane’s eyes were clenched shut.

Lauren spoke up. “Shane, listen to me. Shane, Shane, open your eyes. Look at me. Shane, this is what Gabe does. If you’re feeling foolish and dumb, don’t. He was taking advantage of you, but that doesn’t make you the one who screwed up.”

Shane turned to look at Carla. “He said you were the one who talked him into meeting me.”

“I was the one who kept asking him if he was planning to scam you. I was the one who kept saying, don’t do this. Meet her if you want to, but don’t hurt her. That was what I told him. He said he wouldn’t. And I actually believe at that moment that’s what he thought. And then everything changed. You told us you were getting married, you were gay, you and Carmen had a little money but you could never afford a fancy destination wedding. And then you said the magic words. You said you had this rich friend who was paying for everything, and she had scads of money. And that’s the moment everything changed.”

Shane closed her eyes and a tear rolled down her cheek. She had been the one who set Helena up, right from the very beginning.

Carmen clutched Shane’s arm. “Shane! Don’t do this! I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. It wasn’t your fault. Stop thinking that.”

“Shane, Carmen’s right,” Lauren said quietly. She turned back to Carla. “When did you realize Gabe was planning something?”

“I didn’t, not right away. We were at the dinner table. I was actually the one who said, hey, Whistler’s not too far away, maybe we can go, and it was Gabe who pointed out we hadn’t been invited. And then Shane specifically did invite us. I hadn’t picked up on the whats-her-name woman being rich. I was thinking about Shane getting married in Whistler, how neat that would be. I’ll be the first one to admit, when Gabe is planning something, I don’t always pick up on it. He’s good at keeping stuff inside his head. It’s sometimes hard to tell what he’s thinking.”

“Yeah, that runs in the family,” Shane said. It made everyone laugh.

“Okay, I think I’m ready for the next part,” Carla said. “You said Gabe killed four people. Who was it? Are you really sure?”

“Yes, pretty sure. Very sure, at least on two of them. The first one we’re positive about was Jenny Schecter. Do you remember her?”

“Schecter, Schecter. Should I remember her? Was she at the wedding?”

“Yes,” Lauren said. “Here’s her photo.” She pulled out her cell phone, brought up the photo of Jenny that appeared on the jacket of her book, and showed it to Lauren, who leaned forward to look.

“She’s pretty,” Carla said. “I think ...” she turned to Shane and Carmen. “Was she sitting out on the deck that morning when you all went skiing? Gabe and I stayed on the deck. One of your friends stayed, too, and was talking to some French woman.”

“That was Jenny,” Carmen said. “I think she was introduced to you all, but in a bunch of about ten people, so that’s why you might not specifically remember her.”

“Was she involved with Gabe?”

“No, she was his victim. He was blackmailing her, along with a famous actress. I assume you’ve heard of Niki Stevens?”

“She’s the one who’s always in and out of rehab. Like me.” She laughed, and Carmen, Shane and Lauren smiled. “Yeah, we talk about her in the rehab world. She's a rehab poster girl. And now that you mention it, I vaguely remember something about her being connected to a murder in Hollywood, and a big scandal about a movie about lesbians and all. I remember it, but I didn’t follow it much. I was just getting out of rehab myself somewhere around then. Was that Jenny?”

“That was her,” Lauren said. “Gabe had been blackmailing both Jenny and Niki, ten thousand bucks a month from each, for five months. They balked on the sixth month’s payment, and three days later Jenny was murdered on the deck of the house next to hers, where there was a small social gathering. She was pushed or accidentally fell off the deck, and hit her head. She was unconscious but still alive. But then she was pushed into the swimming pool, and she drowned. We’re not sure whether being pushed off the deck was accidental or not. It could have been. We are completely sure that being rolled into the pool was homicide. You should also know that Gabe appeared to have been stalking Jenny and Niki for some time before the blackmail. He had videos and sound recordings of Jenny and Niki sneaking around LA having sex.”

“Really? That’s odd.”

“Why is that?”

“Gabe was never all that technically inclined. He wasn’t a computer geek, or even close. He could do simple stuff, like everybody, take pictures with his cell phone. He could play games with Shay on his PlayStation, and stuff like that, but he wasn’t especially good at it. Shay always beat him, and not because Gabe let him. I don’t know. Maybe Gabe learned to do that kind of stuff after we broke up at Whistler. But before that, no. If he needed something looked up on the internet he usually asked me or Shay to do it. I don’t know. Staking out people, following them, maybe. Making secret videos and recordings, no. But I could be wrong. Who else do you think he killed?”

“A person named Max Sweeny. You probably met him at Whistler, too. What you also need to know is that Max was transgender. He was a woman named Moira and at one time was Jenny’s lover. Then some time in the year or so before Shane and Carmen’s engagement Moira started transitioning to Max. He hadn’t completed it by the time Jenny was murdered, and he needed money for top surgery. But here’s two things we find interesting. First, we don’t have a good handle on why Max was murdered; we only know that he was. The second thing is, Max was an expert at all things having to do with computers. We have wondered if Max was somehow involved in Gabe’s blackmailing of Jenny and Niki. We don’t have any real evidence, just the suspicion.”

“How was he murdered?”

“One night about six months after Jenny was killed, Max was run down and killed by what was supposed to look like a hit-and-run driver on the side of a high-speed four-lane highway outside of Bakersfield. There was alcohol and oxy in his bloodstream. The thing is, he appears to have been run down by his own car, which is missing and has never been found to this day. Max drank, but he wasn’t known as any kind of heavy drinker, and he did grass, but he was never known to do oxy. He was on a lot of meds for his transition. We’ve wondered about suicide, but there was no note, and no sign of anything suggesting it. We don’t know why he was wandering down the side of a four-lane at 2 in the morning, drunk and stoned. He had thrown up on the other side of the highway a couple hundred yards away. So why did he cross the four-lane and start walking back toward the way he’d come? We think he was driven there, got out or was pushed out of the car and was being chased, set up for the hit-and-run. Kind of an amateurish attempt to make it look accidental, or maybe suicide. Kind of like Jenny’s murder was made to look accidental, too.”

Carla closed her eyes. “Gabe, you sure stepped in the shit this time.” She opened her eyes. “You said there were four murders.”

“Yes. When Jenny got tired of paying the blackmail she hired a private detective to try to find out who the blackmailer was. About three hours before Jenny was murdered the private detective sent her a text message identifying the blackmailer as Gabe. Jenny and the PI communicated by burner phone text messages. We never found Jenny’s phone, and a week later the PI was tracked down on vacation in Ensenada, Mexico. He’d gone out sport fishing offshore. He and the Mexican skipper of the charter boat were never seen again. So what we have is Jenny’s murder, and then after it a second murder, and then two missing people, one associated with Jenny and one somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time. And we don’t believe in that kind of coincidence.”

Carla thought for a moment, then said, "Are you supposed to be telling me all this stuff?"

"No," Lauren said.

"Why are you?"

"To show you how serious this is. How serious we are."

"And get me to tell you if I know where he is."

"Yes. Do you know?"

"No. No idea at all. I haven't seen him since Whistler. When I got back from there, I had a bad couple of days. Then I took Shay to LA to drop him off at Shane's. When I got back up here, all Gabe's stuff was gone. He cleaned out the apartment. I didn't have much of value, but what little I had he took. Left me my clothes and stuff, of course, because there wasn't enough money in it to mess with. I woke up three, four weeks later in a jail cell covered with my own puke. I did some time, rehabbed, relapsed, did more rehab. That one seemed to take. I've been clean and sober twenty-seven months."

"I hope you stay that way," Lauren said. "I hope this business doesn't fuck it up."

"No, it won't. I don't care what happens to him. He deserves everything he gets. If you need to shoot him, fucking do it. Don't hesitate to pull the trigger."

"I'll keep it in mind," Lauren said. "Shane told us Gabe worked in a lumber mill, hurt his back, and then drove a truck for a beer distributor."

"Yes, that's right. Well, mostly right. The part about hurting his back, I wasn't around then, and I don't know how much of it's true or whether that was some scam. He sometimes said his back hurt, but it never seemed to stop him from doing anything. He was driving for a beer distributor when Shane came to visit us."

"He ever work anywhere else?"

"Yeah, he drove a truck for some people out in the wine country. You know, those vineyards. Taking cases of wine from the vineyards and wineries to the distributors and liquor stores around the state. Trouble is, it was seasonal, so that's one reason he switched to beer distributors, 'cause that's year round. But he liked the wine business. He started learning about it. The various kinds, you know. Names of vineyards. All that. Gabe was always bright, and he liked to learn stuff, except computers. Maybe he thought it would be useful for a scam some day, I don't know."

"I know he had a commercial driver's license, from Oregon DMV. It’s expired."

"Yes, he had an Oregon CDL. You need it to drive those kinds of trucks."

"Tell me this: If he isn't in Oregon, where else would he be? What parts of the country did he talk about? Where did you guys go?"

"You know the answer to that as well as I do."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he spent a lot of time in LA, right? Stalking Niki and whats-her-name. Jenny."

"Yes, that's right."

"And he liked wine country. Vineyards and wineries. Driving for them. That's where I'd look. Wine country."

"There's no driver's license or CDL in his name in California. None active anywhere with that name. Got any idea what name he'd use?"

"Did you search for variations? When we were doing scams he'd use names like Mack Gabriel, Mick Gabriel, Gabe McCarran, like that. He said he didn't want to risk using a name he might not recognize right away, like if someone called him Bob, and he'd look around, wondering who Bob was."

"No, I haven't looked," Lauren said. "We've been busy since we found out it was him."

"Well, that's what I'd do. Look for name variations, and look in wine country."

“What can you tell me about Shay?” Shane asked quietly. She and Carmen had been quiet, but now everyone turned to look at Shane. She was slouched in her folding chair, her baseball cap pulled low over her face. Someone who didn’t know might have thought she was napping, but Carmen knew better.

“I’m really sorry about what happened, Shane, truly I am,” Carla said, just as quietly. “The last I saw him was at your house. I ... I did the best I could, which I’ll be the first admit wasn’t very good at all. But ... well, I don’t know how much you know about addicts like me. We have a tough enough time taking care of ourselves, let alone someone else. I understand your mother ... your mother abandoned you when you were a kid, is that right? Gabe told me that.”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “That’s right. I was nine. And you abandoned Shay when he was twelve. The curse of the McCutcheons. We’re pretty disposable.” It was far from Shane’s nature to be sarcastic, and Carmen was surprised to hear Shane say something like this.

“I’m sorry,” Carla said again.

Lauren thought it was time to jump in. “Where would we start looking for Shay?”

“You think he had anything to do with what Gabe was doing?”

“No idea at all. There’s been no sign of him in anything so far. But we won’t know until we find him.”

“Please god, I hope he’s in Florida or England or someplace far away from all this,” Carla said.

“You and me both,” Lauren said. “Any reason you said Florida and England?”

“No, just popped into my head. I should have said Colorado.”

“Why Colorado?”

“Shay had a thing for Colorado. He’s never been there, at least not when I knew him, but he was always talking about it. That song by John Denver, _Rocky Mountain High_ , that was his favorite song. You know what? If Shay isn’t with Gabe anymore, I’d look for him in Colorado.”

“All right, we’ll do that.” Lauren turned to Carmen and Shane. “Anybody got anything else?”

Uncharacteristically, Carmen said nothing.

“I don’t,” Shane said quietly. Then she looked at Carmen. “But you do. And you’d like me to leave the room.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Shane,” Carmen said.

“It’s okay. This is getting to be a habit. Anyway, I need a smoke.” She got up and left the room.

“Carla,” Carmen asked when Shane was gone, “how did Gabe really feel about Shane?”

Carla slowly gave a small, tight smile. “I was wondering when somebody would ask something like that. Okay. What did Gabe think about Shane.” She paused to consider. “I think ... at the end of the day ... he didn’t give a rat’s ass, one way or the other. Emotionally. But he was curious about her. I guess in a sort of clinical, analytical way. He’d had a kid a long, long time ago, so what did she look like? Him or her mother? How did she turn out? Is she going to be a problem? Is she going to want something from him? Is she angry at him? Does he have to be careful about her? That was how he was thinking.”

“Anticipating problems. Or wondering if Shane would ever become one,” Lauren said.

“Yes. But the magazine article implied she was doing okay financially. So that didn’t seem to be a future problem. Kind of the opposite. It wasn’t, ‘Is she going to hit me up for money.’ It was, ‘How can I get something from her.’ See, Gabe was a user. He used people. That’s what he did. And he was good at it.”

“How did he feel about gay people, lesbians. What did he think about Shane being gay. About marrying me, for example,” Carmen asked.

Carla said, “Oh, Gabe doesn’t give a shit about gay people one way or the other. Gay, straight, black, white, old, young, Hispanic, Muslim, Chinese, Martian, handicapped. They all had the same thing in common, as far as he was concerned.”

“Potential victims of a scam,” Lauren said.

“Bingo. Not your first rodeo, is it?” Carla said. “Mine, neither. Yeah. So, to answer your question, Carmen, I don’t think Gabe would have cared if Shane was going to marry Ted Fucking Bundy.”

“So how did he feel about Shay?” Carmen asked.

“That’s a lot more complicated. Yes, I truly believe he loved Shay. I mean, he kept Shay with him from what, the age of four, until at least age twelve, right after Whistler, and maybe longer. I don’t know anything about when or how they split up. But during the eight years we three lived together, Gabe was a reasonably okay father, believe it or not. I’ve love to tell you what a son-of-a-bitch Gabe was as a father, but it wouldn’t be true. Now, he wasn’t the World’s Best, or anything. But he wasn’t the World’s Worst, either. I mean, fuck, he was way better than mine ever was.. But now I have a question for you guys, or I guess you, Carmen. I’ve always wondered, how did Shane and Shay get along? And what happened? About all I know is that after a couple months Gabe came and took Shay away from her.”

Carmen nodded. “As you know, I wasn’t around for any of that, but you know, I kept in touch with everybody but Shane, not right away, but after a few months I’d start hearing about things. Jenny or Alice would tell me stuff if I asked. The short answer is this. At first, when you dropped Shay off, Shane was pissed and didn’t know what to do, as you might imagine, but she came around pretty quick, Alice says. She and Shay bonded. She wasn’t like his new mom, or anything, but she was like this really cool big sister. You know, she did garden around the house, they played video games together, they knew all the same music and stuff, and they were both skateboard fanatics. Shane even had her hair salon at this cool skateboard shop that was in that magazine article you read about. Shane got him into school, and Shay made friends with one of his classmates, and then Shane hooked up with that kid’s mother, a single mom named Paige. They had a relationship for a while, and then it went south, like Shane’s relationships always do. I know that might sound catty, coming from me, but nobody would dispute it. Anyway, one day Shay fell off his skateboard and broke his arm. Shane was strapped for money at that point because most of her savings were tied up in the skateboard shop, and she needed money for Shay’s medical bills for the broken arm. So she took a job she didn’t want, as a model for Hugo Boss underwear. Have you ever seen those ads? The theme was “You’re Looking Very Shane Today,” and showed Shane topless and wearing just a pair of tighty-whities.”

“I was in bad shape myself right around then,” Carla said. “I wasn’t following any trendy fashion magazine stuff. Shane in tighty-whities, huh? Wow.”

“She was doing what she had to do, to make ends meet and take care of Shay,” Carmen said. “I have to admire her for that.”

“Oh, me, too,” Carla said. “I didn’t mean to sound critical. I bet we can all think of a hundred things she could have done in Hollywood that would have been a thousand times worse. SO then what happened?”

“The Double Whammy,” Carmen said. “Gabe came and took Shay away, and Shane and Paige broke up and Paige got pissed and torched the skateboard shop where Shane worked and was a business partner. Basically Shane lost everything, and it took a couple years for the insurance settlement to come through, because Shane was one of the suspects in the arson.”

“Did they ever prosecute Paige for the arson?”

“No. In defense of the police department, they had no good evidence, and the list of suspects included Shane, her business partner, and a couple of other people who stood to gain. Shane and her partner, a guy name Chase – he turns out to be a really good guy, by the way – were the two owners, and in a business arson, they are always the top two suspects, just like the spouse is always the top suspect in a domestic murder. Shane was sure Paige had done it, but she had no proof, any more than anyone else did, and she was reluctant even to tell the police that much. So, short answer, she lost everything and took it pretty hard. And you don’t have to guess very hard how she dealt with it.”

“Drugs, booze, sex,” Carla said. “Been there, done that, own the T-shirt. But Shane got cleaned up?”

“She had some more ups and downs, and Jenny’s murder was really hard on her. They were in a relationship at the time, which is a whole other horror story, but basically yes, she seems to have come through it. Like the arson, Shane was the major suspect in Jenny’s murder. There’s people still think she did it.”

Carla couldn’t help but glance at Lauren.

Lauren smiled. “Yes, at first, I thought so, too, and my boss really did. But we’ve both changed our minds.”

“What does she think about Gabe being the one who killed Jenny?”

“She’s processing it,” Carmen said. “We only just came to suspect Gabe a week or so ago, and it’s new to all of us. He was never on anybody’s radar before now. She has a lot of guilt over it, and it’s always there in the back of her mind.”

“How so?”

“Well, first and foremost, Jenny’s killer is her own father. Then, it was Shane who reconnected with him at the time of the wedding, so indirectly she’s the one who put Helena and all the rest of us on Gabe’s radar. If she hadn’t visited you guys, Gabe would never gone to Whistler, he would never have scammed Helena, and he would never have come back to take a second bite out of the group. He’d have never gone after Jenny and Niki. Jenny would be alive today. Max, too, plus two other people. She’s carrying all that around. Trouble is, she’s basically right, none of that would have happened if it hadn’t been for Whistler.”

“And you two would still be married,” Carla said.

“Well, that’s problematic,” Carmen said. “Maybe we would, maybe not, who knows. But in any case it’s irrelevant to everything else.”

“Did she ever tell you what happened that night? At Whistler?”

“No. Until we started this investigation a month ago, the last time I saw Shane or spoke to her was the night before the wedding, in the hallway, remember? We met, and then Gabe and Shane went off to the bar for a drink and a cigarette. That was the last time I set eyes on her until a month ago.”

“I guess she never told Alice or anybody else what happened.”

“I guess not. Alice and Jenny never said anything, I guess because they don’t know. All I know is Shane called Alice just a few minutes before the wedding was supposed to start, told her it was off, and got on a bus and went back to LA. Then she got blasted on drugs and booze, and didn’t come out of it for four days, and when she did you and Shay were waiting for her on her porch. I didn’t even learn that or that Helena had been scammed out of the ten grand until, like, a year later. It took that long for me to even talk about any of it to Alice or Jenny. Even now, Shane and I don’t ever talk about it. She apologized, said it was all her fault, blah blah. I accepted the apology, but we never discussed details.”

“I don’t want to butt into this,” Lauren said, “but the cop in me says I need to hear what happened. Carmen, if you don’t want to hear it, I understand. But I think whatever it is, you should hear it, but it’s up to you. I’d like to hear from both of you whether Shane should be here to here it.”

“I’m staying,” Carmen said. “End of that discussion. If Shane already knows about what you’re going to tell us, I’d say we don’t make her go through it again.”

“I think I agree with you,” Carla said.

“Okay, so tell us about Whistler that night.”

“That day and that night,” Carla said. “Carmen, as you remember, we ran into most of you guys at breakfast and we were introduced to everybody who was there. You and your family, Alice, Bette and her partner, I forget her name--”

“Tina.”

“Tina. Helena, her mother, and whats-her-name, Bette’s sister, the black woman.”

“Kit.”

“Kit. I don’t think Jenny and Max were there, but I could be wrong. It seemed like we met ten or fifteen people, you know how that is, and I was never great with names anyway. So then an hour or so later, some of us were out on the patio, and you and your family came by and went skiing, and Alice went off somewhere, and Helena came by and said, you know, if you need anything, let me know.”

Carla paused to take a sip of coffee.

“So we’re at lunch, and Helena was at the other side of the room going out the door, and Gabe jumps up and follows her out. I follow to the door, and they are talking just outside in the lobby. Gabe is telling her about how we were going to give you guys a wedding gift of ten thousand dollars for the down payment on the house you guys told us you wanted to buy, but we had forgotten the cashier’s check. And Helena jumped on the bait without thinking, and says oh, that’s too bad, I’ll loan you the money, and next thing you know we’re neck-deep in the scam. They go off together to the bank and I’m left high and dry, waiting in the restaurant, and finally I pay the check and go for a walk. I’m really pissed. When I got back to the hotel room Gabe’s taking a nap. We have an argument, I tell him he shouldn’t do this, not to his own daughter on her wedding day. The motherfucker actually laughed. Sure I can, he says. He said fuck it, it’s Helena’s money and Shane won’t find out until after the wedding, she and Carmen will be fucking their brains out after they say ‘I do,’ and won’t find out until days or weeks later, and maybe Helena will never even tell them at all. He was counting on Helena to be too embarrassed to say anything, and you and Shane had no clue about any house or down payment, anyway, right? And we’d be gone before the ceremony and you guys wouldn’t miss us until afterward, if at all.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t know what to do. I took a nap. A little while later Gabe gets up and goes out, I go back to sleep. When I wake up he’s still not back. I go looking for him but I don’t find him. I go back to the room and he’s packed up all his stuff and snuck out. I realize he’s run out on me. Big surprise, right? So I yell and scream and cry. Then I call the bus company and find out when the next bus is going down to Portland. I’m packing and there’s a knock on the door. It’s Shane, and she’s upset and pissed, too. She wants to know what’s going on. I tell her Gabe has run off. Anyway, I go to leave to walk to the bus station, and Shane insists on coming along. So she walked me to the terminal. We’re sitting there, I tell her she doesn’t have to wait with me, but she does. And then ... and then I told her about the money. About scamming the ten grand from Helena. She tells me she saw Gabe in the bar with some bimbo. She says he didn’t even know her name, he has to ask her what it is. Then he walks out with the slut, but first he tells Shane he’s not proud of what he’s doing, it’s just who he is. And then he drops the blockbuster on her. He says, ‘You know what I mean.’ Something like that.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Carmen said.

“He was telling Shane that she was like him. That he’s unfaithful, a cheater, just like Shane was going to be. He meant Shane was going to run out on you one day. It’s the McCutcheon genes. He was telling her she’s no good, just like him. On her wedding day, he tells her that. She’s a cheater and her marriage is going to fail.”

“Motherfucker,” Carmen whispered. A tear ran down her cheek.

“Yeah. Tell me about it. So then we talk about what bastards men are, and why we fall for bad boys, and like that, and how we can’t change them and we can’t fix them. Actually, I did the talking. Shane didn’t say much. Then my bus comes, and I get on it and I go back to Oregon.”

“What time was this, at the bus station?” Lauren asked.

“The bus left at 5:45 p.m.,” Carla said.

Carmen was crying quietly. Nobody said anything.


	30. The Longest Day

It was almost 8 p.m. when they got into the rental car to leave Carla’s rehab center. Shane had been curled up in the back seat, looking at her cell phone when Lauren and Carmen came out. Carmen climbed into the passenger seat. “Drink. Food. Then drink,” she said.

Behind the wheel, Lauren buckled her seat belt and started the car. “Roger that. Copy. Ten-four.” No one said anything until they were almost in Portland. “Anybody got any preferences?” she asked. “Comfort food? Tex-Mex? Chinese? Thai? Steak house? Should we go to the motel and check in first?”

“Drink. Food. Drink. Sleep,” Carmen said.

“Drink. Food. Drink. Sleep,” Shane said from the back seat.

“I hate it when you guys are so wishy-washy and indecisive,” Lauren said. “Carmen, get out your cell phone. Find drink, food, drink, sleep.”

“Ten four, roger dodger, copy that, on it,” Carmen said. She worked on it. “Okay, got something. Do we want a one-room suite, three beds, or two rooms, a single and a double, or three rooms?”

”Suite’s okay by me,” Lauren said. “You guys are the variables.”

“Suite’s okay by me,” Shane said from the back.

“Me, too,” Carmen said. She searched Google on her phone. “Okay, here we go. Cool hotel right downtown on the Willamette River, good prices, restaurant menu looks really good. Turn left up ahead onto southeast Tacoma Street, cross the river, then turn right as soon as you get on the other side, onto Macadam Avenue. Then it’s on the right about a mile and a half, maybe two miles.”

“Call them, see if there’s a suite, or anything with three beds.”

Carmen did, and called. “We’re good to go,” she said. She checked Google maps. “Coming up on your left turn in two miles.”

They checked in on Lauren’s credit card, parked their bags in the room, and went down to the restaurant.

“Fuck it, let’s go pedal to the metal,” Lauren said while they looked at the drinks menu. “LASD is paying.” She ordered the Añejo Special: Añejo tequila, fresh lime, agave, absinthe bitters, Peychaud’s bitters, egg white. Shane did, too. Carmen dialed up the Citron Presse: Volstead vodka, New Deal ginger liqueur, fresh lemon, mint, and prosecco.

Lauren looked at her watch and let out a big sigh. “I am officially off duty,” she said.

They studied the menus until the drinks came.

“I’m thinking something light. The Mexican Shrimp Cocktail, and then bed,” Carmen said.

“You know, that sounds good to me, too,” Lauren said.

“Me, three,” Shane said. The waiter took their menus and disappeared.

They tried their drinks.

“Oh, man, that’s good,” Lauren said. “I may need a repeater on this thing.”

“Ten four,” Carmen said.

They sipped their drinks.

After a while, Shane asked, “So. How bad was it?”

Nobody said anything.

“That bad, huh?” Shane said.

Lauren and Carmen looked at each other. “Want me to go?” Lauren asked.

“Yes, I do,” Carmen said, “but it has to be me.”

“Okay,” Lauren said.

Carmen took a sip of her drink. “Carla told us about that last day, in Whistler. What happened. First you saw him and some bimbo named Patty in the bar. Then you went to their room, and talked to Carla. She said Gabe had run out on her. You walked with her to the bus station. She told you about scamming Helena out of the money. You told her about seeing him and Patty in the bar. She got on the bus. It was ninety minutes before the wedding was supposed to start.”

Shane wouldn’t look up.

“Carla told us what Gabe said to you, at the bar. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done, but it was just who he was. And you should know, because you were just like that, too.”

Carmen let a moment go by. “Until today, I never knew any of that. You never told anybody, Shane, because I know Alice and Jenny didn’t know about it, or they’d have told me, sooner or later. But they never did, because they didn’t know. You kept that locked up inside yourself, all these years.”

Shane wouldn’t look up. It was a terrible moment for the waiter to arrive, but he did, placing their shrimp cocktails in front of them. He could tell something was wrong at the table, and decided to skip the usual remark, “Enjoy!”

It was a full minute before Lauren picked up a shrimp, dipped it into the cocktail sauce, and took a bite.

“That night, after everyone left,” Carmen said quietly, “I sat in the tent. My mother came and sat beside me. She said I should go talk to you, find out what happened. I said no, I knew what happened. But I was wrong. I didn’t know. I thought ... I thought you just didn’t want to marry me. I thought you panicked, decided maybe you didn’t love me. I guess it was kind of selfish, you know? That it was all about me. Or all about you and me. But it was my wedding night, what was I supposed to think? It _was_ all about me, or me and you. And so, for nearly a whole fucking year, I never knew about Helena being scammed. Until today, I didn’t know about Gabe and that woman in the bar. Running out on Carla. You walking Carla to the bus station. None of it. See, for a year, all I knew was, you left me at the altar. That’s all. Nothing else. And then, slowly, over a couple months, they started to tell me a few small pieces about all the other stuff I never knew about, but by then it didn’t matter, you know? Maybe that’s why they started telling me, because it didn’t matter anymore. For a long time, even Jenny and Alice, who told me everything else, they, too, just thought you panicked and ran. Just like everybody in our group of friends thought you would. Half of them were surprised you’d made it as far as Whistler in the first place. By then I was in San Francisco, I had started my life over. You were just a bump in the road in the highway behind me. Which you have to admit sounds like a really lousy lesbian country ‘n’ western song. So anyway, yeah, ninety minutes before you were supposed to get married you found out your father was a bastard as well as a criminal, and he had just taken one of your friends for ten thousand bucks and run out on his wife and son, the step-brother you hardly even knew you had. So yeah, I guess you had a few things on your mind that night I had no idea about. Alice was calling and texting you like crazy, and you didn’t answer, you were at the bus station. Your father had just told you that you were a worthless piece of shit like he was, and you believed him. He as much as told you that you were going to cheat on me, just as he was cheating on Carla, and you believed him. And you had maybe two hours to process all that, and then show up at your wedding to make what you thought was the biggest mistake of your life. You were supposed to be all happy and smiley like a nervous groom, and make me the happiest woman in the world, and love, honor and cherish ‘til death do us part, have a drink with our family and friends and then go fuck our brains out.”

“Shane,” Carmen said, “you couldn’t possibly process all the shit Gabe dumped on you in a full calendar year, let alone during one single Happy Hour. Shane, there is no way on god’s green earth you could do that. No one could. You hear me? Not even people ten times faster than you at processing stuff. A hundred times. Fuck, it’s been six years and _I’m_ still processing stuff. Shane, listen to me. Shane, there was just no way you could show up at the altar in your tux and marry me. For the first time, I understand that now. Okay? Shane?”

Shane’s face was streaked with tears. She lowered her face into her hands, crying quietly. The waiter saw her and approached the table, concern on his face. Lauren raised her hand up a few inches, signaling everything was okay, and he went away.

“Shane, eat your shrimp,” Carmen said quietly. “They’re really good. And I know you’ll like this cocktail sauce.”

After a moment, Shane pulled herself together, mopped her face, and slowly began to eat. “He was right, you know. Sooner or later, I’d have cheated on you.”

“Oh, I know,” Carmen said. “Everybody knew that. You already had, once before. There were consequences. Then we got past it. And if you did cheat again, there would be consequences again. Maybe the same one, maybe different, I don’t know. And then we’d get past it, again.”

She paused, took a shrimp from the martini glass it was served in. “Look, there’s something you’re overlooking. You are NOT Gabe McCutcheon. You are nothing like him in any way, shape or form except you both like pussy, but so do a majority of people on the planet. No big deal. Yes, you’d probably cheat on me, but all it would be was you’d have a couple drinks and just go bang somebody you met at a party, and that would be the end of it. You wouldn’t sneak home, pack all your stuff, move out, and loot the bank account. Gabe would and did. You, never in a million million years. Well, yes, you’d sneak home, but not the rest. Would I be pissed? Yes, absolutely. Would I make you pay? You bet your sweet ass I would. I’d make your life a living hell for a couple of weeks. Would we have had an open marriage, anybody fucks anybody whenever they please? No way, absolutely not. You know how I feel about monogamy. All I’m saying is, we’d have made it work. But Shane, you are NOT Gabriel Fucking McCutcheon. You are not ‘no good,’ like he said. And hey, how the fuck would he even know? He barely even knew you. You know what his opinion was worth? It wasn’t worth shit. Then or now. Who the hell relies on Gabe McCutcheon for a character assessment? He took a shot in the dark, that’s all, and it happened to hit home. But it was no fucking bull’s eye, all right? I’m running out of metaphors here. You’re sitting here in the presence of a badass Los Angeles County police officer and the world’s hottest badass DJ helping to track down a murderer, so don’t sit there and sulk about what some asshole said about you. If you don’t eat that last shrimp in your glass I’m going to steal it from you. Lauren, flag down the waiter. I need another drink.”

“Yes, ma’am, sir! I’m on it! Great pep talk, by the way. Now we have to take away Shane’s belt and shoelaces.”

“Fucking A,” Carmen said. It finally made Shane laugh, and everything was okay.

“I liked ‘running out of metaphors.’” Lauren said.

“I was educated by nuns,” Carmen said.

“Ahh, that explains it. Honor roll?”

“You mean... you weren’t?” Carmen asked, feigning astonishment.

That made Lauren and Shane laugh.

“National Honor Society, three years. Second place, Science Fair. I was robbed,” Lauren said.

“I never doubted it,” Carmen said. “So what’s tougher, being a genius, a lesbian, or a bad-ass LA cop?”

“Lesbian,” Lauren said. “Some people like cops and teacher’s pets.”

“Good one,” said Shane, who had fucked at least one of each kind. Much more than one, truth be told. Neither Lauren nor Carmen ever had.

They laughed, and ordered another round.

* * *

Carmen had two motives for suggesting a suite for the three of them, and Lauren had instantly understood and agreed. The first was it would keep Shane from wondering if Carmen and Lauren were going to sleep together that night, “sleep” being the euphemism for fuck. The second was they could keep an eye on Shane. Shane would figure that out, but not for three or four days, and by then it wouldn’t matter.

“Traveling on business or pleasure?” the guy at the registration desk in the hotel lobby asked.

Lauren gave him a stern look and flashed her badge and handed him her LASD travel credit card. “I’m Detective Hancock. This is Detective Morales and Detective McCutcheon. Our car’s a rental, I don’t remember the plate number. Do you care?”

“No, that’s fine, Detective,” he said, running her card. Message received: don’t fuck with cops.

“Can we have twin beds in our suite instead of a double?” she asked.

“Yes, of course. The third bed is the sofa, which is actually quite comfortable when it pulls out. But if there’s any problem don’t hesitate to call the front desk. I’m here to midnight, and I’ll tell the overnight people to keep an eye out for you.

“We’ll be asleep long before that,” Lauren said. “We’ve had a long, hard day, and we fly out in the morning.”

“I understand. Can we help you with your luggage?”

“No, we only have these overnight bags. We can manage, thank you.”

“Great. And by the way, there’s sodas and beer in the mini-fridge, and a mini-bar. Help yourselves, it’s on the house.”

Sometimes it’s good to be a law enforcement professional.

“Ten-four,” Lauren said. Carmen froze her face, trying not to laugh.

* * *

It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon by the time they got to Marybeth’s office.

“You guys have lunch yet?” Marybeth asked. “I’ve had a hellacious morning and I’m starved.”

“We just got in from Burbank airport,” Lauren said.

“Good. Let’s all get lunch and you can brief me.”

When they got to Marybeth’s favorite luncheonette, three lawyers were in her favorite booth, but they were just waiting for the waitress to return with their credit cards, so they waited until the lawyers were gone.

“Productive?” Marybeth asked as they stood up front, waiting.

“Yes, very. That’s what I think. Carmen?”

“Yes, I agree.”

Marybeth noticed Shane had nothing to add, but that wasn’t unusual. She let it go.

After they ordered, Lauren briefed Marybeth on everything they learned, but she left out the part about what Shane had done and learned right before the wedding. It had nothing to do with the investigation, and Shane didn’t need to hear it repeated all over again.

“Okay,” Marybeth said, “you’ve got your work cut out for you this afternoon.”

“I know,” Lauren said. “We have something more than 25 million licensed drivers in California, but only about 135,000 drivers with truck driver licenses. If I have to, I’ll search the entire DMV driver database, but I want to try to shortcut it by searching just the CDL licenses first. If what Carla told is right, he has a CDL license and is driving a truck somewhere, probably in wine country. I’ll run a lot of variations on Gabe and Gabriel, and anything with Mc or Mac in the last name, see what pops. We’ll have faces, and Shane and Carmen can buzz through them real fast, see if anything hits. We can cut the list down a good bit by eliminating anybody under 40 or 45, any non-white, any females, and so on. Even if we wind up with a big list, if we cut it in half, Carmen can look at one half and Shane can look at the other.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Marybeth said. “Carmen, Shane, you on board with that?”

“Yes, sure,” Carmen said. Shane nodded.

“Shane, I want to say something,” Marybeth said, “and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. First, you’ve already done a lot of work on this. You initiated the whole thing. But if you want to bail out, I’ll understand, and I’m sure Lauren and Carmen will, too. We all know the emotional toll this is taking on you. Thanks to you, we now have plenty to go on, without your further help. What I’m saying is, if you want to stay, and take part, that’s great. But if you need to back off, for your own emotional protection, please just let us know. Now, I don’t want you to think for a second I’m trying to get you to drop out. I’m not. But we’re looking to find, capture, and arrest your own father for four counts of murder. That cannot be easy for you, I don’t care how estranged you are from him. Just say the word, at any time. Shane, I’m thinking of your own mental well-being, and that’s all I’m saying. You don’t even have to respond right now. There’s no deadline on this. Just think it over.”

Shane took a sip of her iced tea. “Okay, I’ve thought it over,” she said. “I’m staying. He killed Jenny. Alice is in jail. Those are the only two things that matter. To me, anyway. Let’s get the motherfucker.”

Good for you, Carmen thought to herself.

Marybeth nodded. “Understood,” she said.

* * *

Lauren got one of the computer techs to help her set up the search profile on the CDL database of people with truck licenses. “The first thing I want you to do is run every male above the age of 35 whose last name starts with M,” Lauren said.

“About nine and a half percent of all last names start with M,” the tech said. “It’s the most common letter, followed by S, which is nearly as many. B, C, H and R comes next. M, that’s going to produce about 13,000 names.”

“Cut out women, non-Caucasians, and under 35s,” Lauren said. The tech tapped his keyboard. A moment later he said, “Nine thousand four hundred thirty-seven.”

“Whatever,” said. “Find the midpoint. Set up one half for on one laptop for Lauren to look at, one half on another laptop for Shane. Ladies, you’re each going to look at 4,700 faces, more or less. Less, if you find Gabe. Go. I’ll be in my cubby.”

Twenty-seven minutes later Shane paused her “next” button finger and sat frozen. She was looking at the CDL license photo of one McKenzie, Gabriel J.

Her father.

* * *

“Got him,” Carmen said. She and Shane stood at the entrance of Lauren’s cubicle. She handed Lauren a sheet of paper, a printout of the CDL license information for Gabriel J. McKenzie, 6 feet 1 inch, brown eyes, gray-brown hair, weight 195 pounds, age 59, address on Shurtleff Avenue, Imola, California, a small town just south of the town of Napa in Napa Valley.

“Jesus,” Lauren whispered, reading the paper. “Come on.”

They walked to Marybeth’s office, but she wasn’t there. Lauren left the paper on Marybeth’s chair. They went back to Lauren’s cubby. “Pull up some chairs.” They did, as Lauren started punching in information on her computer. Every minute or two, the printer by her computer shot out a sheet of paper as Lauren printed out everything law enforcement and other agencies of the State of California knew about one McKenzie, Gabriel J., wants and warrants (none), traffic tickets (running a red light in Stockton a year ago), employment (two companies that looked like vineyards), anything and everything that popped up. It wasn’t much ... but it wasn’t nothing, either.

“Here’s something interesting,” Lauren said, staring at her screen. “Gabriel J. McKenzie with this Social Security number died in a car crash in Modesto in 1991.”

“He stole somebody’s identity,” Carmen said.

“Yes,” Lauren said.

“This was way too easy,” Carmen said.

“I was thinking that, too, but sometimes it happens,” Lauren said.

“Do you have his Oregon driver’s license or CDL license?”

“Yes, why?”

“Can you pull them up? I’m curious about something.”

“Okay, give me a minute.”

Lauren typed information into her computer, and found the file she wanted. “Here you go.”

Gabe McCutcheon’s Oregon license came up on the screen.

“Holy shit,” Lauren whispered.

“Shane, can you come here a second?” Carmen asked. Shane was sitting on the other side of the conference table, typing an e-mail into her phone.

“I don’t want to look at the son-of-a-bitch,” she said.

“I know. But please come here anyway.”

Shane looked at her. She knew something was wrong. “What?”

“Just come here.”

Shane came around the table and looked at Lauren’s screen. “I don’t understand,” she said.

The Oregon driver’s license said Gabriel McCutcheon, height, weight, same address as the one Shane had visited. The photograph, though was of someone Shane had never seen before.

“I pulled this up a couple weeks ago, when we first started looking for him,” Lauren said. “Thing is, I’d never seen Gabe McCutcheon, so I had no way of knowing the photo was wrong. And it gets worse. This is the photo I sent out on the BOLO.”

“Oh, shit,” Carmen whispered.

“Who is that?” Shane asked.

“Hell if I know,” Lauren said. “Maybe we can run it through facial recognition, see if something pops. But if I had to guess, it’s somebody who is dead. Because if this guy ever showed up at an airport where facial recognition was used, it would say it was Gabriel McCutcheon and the guy is standing there with John Doe on his airline ticket. And if good old Gabe McKenzie wanted to fly somewhere or got pulled over for doing 35 in a school zone the Oregon photo wouldn’t betray him.

Just then Marybeth came up to Lauren’s cubby, the sheet of paper with Gabe’s new CDL license in her hand. “How sure are we this is him?”

“Hundred percent, now,” Lauren said. “Gabriel McKenzie with the same Social Security Number died in 1991. He’d would have been two years older than Gabe was at the time, so it was a real good fit, fraudulent identity-wise.”

“Not a good fit, a great fit,” Marybeth said. “It can’t be coincidence they have the same first name and a Mick-something last name, and a close birth date.”

“Carla told us he liked to keep something close to his true name. That’s how we got him in the first place. We went looking for Gabriels.”

Marybeth looked at Lauren’s computer monitor with the Oregon license plate photo. “Who’s that?”

“I was just going to tell you. This is Gabe McCutcheon’s Oregon license, and that’s the photo we put out on the BOLO.”

Marybeth looked at the print-out in her hand. “Son-of-a-bitch,” she said. “We’ve been looking for the wrong guy.”

“Right guy, just wrong face,” Lauren said. “But if we didn’t have Shane and Carmen here to ID the correct face, we’d go on looking for the wrong one from now until Doomsday.”

“Carla told us Gabe didn’t have all that many computer skills,” Carmen said. “You do, and you have access to all this databases the average person wouldn’t have. So how did Gabe manage it?”

They all looked at each other. But it was Shane who said it. “Max,” she said.

After that everything happened very quickly.

* * *

“We have to start from scratch,” Marybeth said. “Run the fingerprints from Oregon on the mystery guy, see what pops. If McCutcheon found a way to swap out the photo, maybe he found a way to swap out the print file, too. He has an arrest records for drugs and stuff, right? So get on the phone to Sacramento, and to Oregon and Texas, and get people to dig in their old hard-copy files to get some fingerprints of paper copies. Somebody’s got to have an old hard copy somewhere, even if it’s in a warehouse. Anybody gives you crap, tell them our guy is wanted for four murders, and talk to supervisors until you get stalled, and then tell me and I’ll get upstairs on the line police-chief-to-police-chief. I’ll get the FBI, Interpol and the KGB if I have to. When we’ve got good prints, re-issue the BOLO and make sure everybody knows about the bogus ID.”

“Got it,” Lauren said.

“I’ll give it to Lockhart and Tom Osaka,” Marybeth turned to Carmen and Shane. “You guys have earned your keep, after all. Sorry, that didn’t come out right. What I mean is, I’m glad you’re here.”

“This ID swap doubles up Gabe’s motive for killing Max,” Lauren said.

“I don’t understand,” Shane said.

“We’ve been assuming his motive was because of Max’s role helping him with the blackmail. But Max did even more than we ever suspected. Now we think Max also found a way to change Gabe’s identity. You can buy a piss-poor fake driver’s license for a hundred bucks in any college town. But hacking into the Oregon DMV and swapping out the photo, that’s significantly harder. You don’t do that for a hundred bucks.

“Tell me this,” Carmen said. “How much skill does it take to find a dead person whose general profile matches something you want?”

“If you’ve got really good computer skills, like you say Max did, it isn’t too hard,” Lauren said. “Gabe McCutcheon was born in 1956. So you search for everybody named Gabriel who was born from, say, 1954 to 1958, who is now deceased. He’d probably start with Oregon, Washington and California. Pull up that list. Delete everybody but those starting with M, c, or M, A, C. If you don’t get something useful, throw in Nevada, Utah, Arizona. He’d want Texas, too, come to think of it, since he was born there.”

“Then what?”

“Try to find the SSN, obituary, other information you’d need to create a new identity on top of the old one.”

“Give me copies of your paperwork,” Marybeth said to Lauren, “then start your new warrant and BOLO, with a note that says fingerprint records have been compromised. I’m going to call the Napa County Sheriff’s Department and Napa city police. You’re not gonna like the next part.”

“Get on a plane,” Carmen said.

“One-third right,” Marybeth said. “Lauren goes, not you two. If it goes the way I hope, the Napa folks will put together some sort of SWAT team. They’re going after someone who committed four murders, so they won’t mess around, and they’ll never let you two within a hundred miles of what they have to do.”

Carmen, Shane and Lauren all looked at each other.

“I need to hear a ‘Yes, Lieutenant, ma’am, sir,” from you two,” Marybeth said.

“Yes, Lieutenant, sir, madam, your honor,” Carmen said.

“Your turn,” Marybeth said, looking at Shane.

“Ten-four. Roger dodger. Copy that,” Shane said quietly.

“Shane, don’t fuck with me,” Marybeth said. “This is where it gets really serious. You and Nancy Drew here go home and get some sleep. Charlie’s Angels is officially retired. Nod your heads. Make affirmative noises.”

“Got it,” Carmen said quietly.

“Okay,” Shane said.

“Go home,” Marybeth said, not unkindly. “You guys done good. Let the professionals do their jobs now. ‘Kay?”

“‘Kay,” Carmen said. She turned to Shane. “Let’s go turn in our horses at the livery stable and find us a saloon with some whiskey and some bar gals can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. I’ll buy you a drink.”

* * *

Lauren drove to Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, and caught the last flight to Sacramento. The obvious choice was San Francisco airport, which was 55 miles from Napa, but on the south side of the city; she’d have to drive through all the San Francisco traffic and across the Golden Gate Bridge. Sacramento was 60 miles, but the drive west to Napa would be much easier.

The plane was a propeller-driven puddle-jumper, half empty, with just two seats on each side of the aisle. Lauren’s badge got her seated first, and she had the window seat. She leaned her head against the bulkhead and closed her eyes. Two minutes before the flight attendants were going to close the door Carmen and Shane came aboard with carry-ons and walked down the aisle to their seats near the back. Lauren looked at them, and they smiled as they went past.

Lauren was waiting for them at the end of the enclosed walkway. “You guys are so in trouble,” she said. “Soon as I get my gun out of checked luggage I’m pistol-whipping the pair of you.”

“You didn’t think we were going to just follow orders and disband the posse, did you?” Carmen asked.

“Call me naive,” Lauren said. “Call me stupid. Call me a cock-eyed optimist.”

“It’s Shane’s fault,” Carmen said. “I was going to buy her a drink, just like I said, but she wanted wine. She said the wine in LA wasn’t fresh enough. It was old and stale. Shane likes her wine really, really fresh, you know? And I could hardly disagree. We immediately thought of Napa Valley. The wine is really fresh there.”

“It was spooky how we both had the same idea at the same moment,” Shane said.

“What about the bar girls sucking the chrome off your trailer hitches?” Lauren asked as they walked to the baggage carousels.

“We don’t have trailer hitches,” Shane said.

“We’re city girls,” Carmen said. “We don’t know which end of a pickup the trailer hitch goes on. I don’t. Do you, Shane?”

“Top, I think. Pretty sure it’s the top. But could be the bottom, I guess.”

“You’d think with all our extensive knowledge of tops and bottoms we’d know where the trailer hitch goes,” Carmen said.

“Beats the fuck outa me,” Shane said.

Lauren was immune to banter. “Did you follow me to Burbank airport?” she asked.

“Hell, no!” Carmen said indignantly. “We would never do that! We got there first. You were diddling around on your computer. And if I may say so, you took your sweet-ass time getting there. We waited, like, an hour. We were beginning to think you weren’t coming, or you were flying out of LAX or something. Then you finally showed up.”

“How did you know I was flying to Sacramento?” Lauren asked as they walked to the luggage carousels.

“We didn’t, until we saw which gate you went to. Then we ran to get tickets. We barely made it.”

“I noticed.”

“It’s all in the _Nancy Drew Handbook for Girl Detectives_ ,” Carmen said.

“Very funny.”

“We couldn’t even show up at the gate until you got onto the plane,” Shane said. “Then we waited until just about the very last minute to board.”

“In case I wouldn’t let you on the plane,” Lauren said.

“Yes.”

“You know I’m going to have to tell her,” Lauren said. Marybeth. Dragon Lady.

“We know,” Shane and Carmen said simultaneously. Carmen added, “Tell her we came along as your bodyguards. We didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“Uh-huh. You realize that after I pistol-whip you guys, Marybeth’s gonna pistol-whip me within an inch of my life.”

“Can we watch?” Shane asked innocently.

“Will you be naked?” Carmen asked.

“You fucking wish,” Lauren said, picking her overnight bag off the luggage conveyor.

Lauren had used a specialty web site to rent a Mustang; cops always like lots of horsepower, and it was always hard to depart from the Steve McQueen car chase stereotype. It meant Shane was crammed in the backseat, but she didn’t mind. Lauren took the 5 west to Woodland, then south on the 113 just past Davis, and then it was almost 30 miles of high-speed cruising on the 80 to Vacaville and then Cordelia. When she saw the first exit sign for Vacaville, Lauren said, “There’s two big prisons here. The California Medical Facility is the largest prison medical facility in the state. They say it’s pretty good. They’ve got about 2,500 men there. They’ve got a big psychiatric section too, for the nut jobs. Timothy Leary did a year or two there for marijuana and a jail break out of San Luis Obispo. Charles Manson was in and out of there a couple times until one day a fellow inmate threw paint thinner on him and set him on fire. Unfortunately he survived, but with second- and third-degree burns. Then they shipped him to San Quentin. This place here has a big hospice care section, and a section for seniors. It’s basically where old prisoners go to die.”

“Maybe my dear old dad will die there,” Shane said. “Good to know he’ll be well taken care of in his golden years.”

Lauren left that alone. “The other prison is Solano, medium security. It made a lot of news years ago, because of over-crowding. It was designed for, like, 2,500 men, but they were up over 5,000. Capacity rate was something like a hundred ninety-something percent. They had to bring in emergency triple-high bunk beds. They got it down to something like 3,500, capacity is something like a hundred thirty, hundred forty percent. You get shanked there, it’s just a short way to the medical facility.”

“Handy,” Carmen said.

“It’s been bugging me,” Lauren said. “I know I know it.”

“What’s that?”

“The sucking-the-chrome-off-a-trailer-hitch line.”

“Willie Nelson in _The Electric Horseman_ , 1979,” Carmen said.

“Right! Redford and Jane Fonda. Good flick. I forgot Willie was even in it. Man, you know your movies,” Lauren said.

“You have no idea,” Shane said from the backseat. “A few years ago they had a film festival thing at Cal U about Western movies, and Carmen and I and the gang all went. One of the guest speakers got hung up in traffic, so they didn’t have a speaker. We all pushed Carmen into going up on stage, and she gave this incredible talk, totally without any preparation, no rehearsal, no notes, just off the top of her head, and it got a standing ovation. She was terrific. You should have been there.”

“I wish I had been,” Lauren said. “I didn’t know I had a learned celebrity guest lecturer in the car.”

“You don’t,” Carmen said, “but here’s a celebrity story you probably never heard. Do you know the cowboy actor Bull Connor?”

“That the guy who came out of the closet a couple years ago?”

“That’s him. And he’s not the first gay caballero, either. Here’s what you don’t know: Jenny once auditioned to be the ghostwriter of his memoirs. This was before she got published and got famous and drifted into Crazyland. She had some meetings with him, and Jenny got him to admit to her that he was gay. So that led to them talking about whether the memoir she was going to write would be dishonest. Which of course it would. Long story short, Bull fired her as his ghostwriter because she was a lesbian, but it was kind of mutually agreeable. When he finally came out a few years later I was on a cruise somewhere and Jenny e-mailed me to call her when I could. We docked in Honolulu and I called her, and we laughed and laughed when she told me he’d come out. Jenny was sure it was because he’d been thinking about the conversations she’d had with him, until it finally got to him. For what it’s worth, I think she was right.”

“So Jenny is responsible for Bull Connor coming out?”

“Well, I think so, and I know Jenny did. Shane, you agree?” Carmen asked.

“Yes,” Shane said. “Jenny and I laughed about it, too. I didn’t know she called you, though.”

Carmen decided not to point out that she was the one who called Jenny, but kept quiet. Shane was annoyed whenever she discovered Carmen had kept in touch with the group after the Whistler disaster.

“Should we have had Bull on our list of suspects when we started this?”

“No,” Carmen said. “As far as I know Jenny never had any more contact with him. And then after he voluntarily came out, what motive would he have had? None that I can see.”

“I agree,” said Shane.

“Okay,” Lauren said. It was silent in the car for a while, all three of them thinking basically the same thing none of them wanted to discuss out loud: Jenny’s greatest talent seemed to be her long history of pissing people off, until finally one of them had killed her in the heat of an argument. Carmen seemed to be the only person who had never been really pissed at Jenny for anything, and maybe that was because her friendship existed long distance after Whistler. If Carmen had stayed in LA and part of the group on a daily basis, would Jenny have eventually pissed her off, too? Would she have dragged Carmen into a PA job on the nightmare that was the filming of _Lez Girls_? Betrayed her in some way? Fucked up some relationship Carmen might have had with someone, just as she had meddled with Bette and Tina’s relationship, and Helena and Dylan’s relationship, and Max and Tom’s ... and maybe even Shane’s relationship with who knows?

The other thing they were all thinking was that if it hadn’t been for this investigation into Jenny’s murder, Carmen and Lauren would likely never have met each other.

Lauren broke the silence. “Before I left the office I got a reservation at a motel in Napa. The room has two double beds. You guys want to bunk in with me, again? I don’t know if they even have another room, the hotel guy said the only reason I got this one was a cancellation. Or you could look for another motel nearby.”

“You mind us rooming with you?” Carmen asked.

“I’m really conflicted,” Lauren said. “I’d much rather you were both in LA, or Chicago, or Budapest, anyplace but here. But on the other hand, I really need to keep the pair of you where I can see you at all times.”

“Does that include in the shower?” Shane asked.

“I’m thinking seriously of driving this fucking Mustang right into a tree,” Lauren said. “Do me a big favor and unbuckle your seat belts first.”

“I think we finally plucked her nerves one time too much, Shane,” Carmen said.

“I know. But you gotta admit, she really took one helluva lot of our shit.”

“She did. I vote we give her a break. All those in favor, say aye.”

“Aye,” Shane said.

“Aye,” Carmen said.

Lauren wanted to laugh, but she kept a straight face.

“She didn’t vote,” Shane said. “Is she sulking? In a snit? I hate it when she’s in a snit.”

“I think she intends to shoot us. Probably you first.”

“She’s a dedicated, straight-arrow police person. Can she do that?”

“Well, probably not legally. She’d need good cause.”

“She hasn’t said anything,” Shane said. “Think she can still hear us?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Carmen said. “Have you noticed how good she is at her job? I bet her hearing is just fine.”

Lauren sighed. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. After we check in, you two bitches are going to buy me a drink. An expensive one. Then after we eat, I’m going to bed, because I’m going to get up real early, about 3 a.m. What you don’t know is the Napa police are going to raid Gabe’s house before dawn, like about 5 a.m., and I’m going to be there. You two are going to stay in the motel room if I have to fucking handcuff both of you to the toilet bowl. I’m deadly serious about this. You are staying put. No fooling around. I need serious promises from both of you. I’ll call you and tell you what happened when I can.”

Shane and Carmen stayed silent, thinking about the pre-dawn raid.

“It’s getting serious, isn’t it?” Carmen said.

“Yes. I haven’t heard any promises yet.”

“I promise,” Carmen said.

“I promise,” Shane said.

*` * *

“This sucks,” Carmen said. She was in the motel swimming pool, dressed in a pair of Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt, because the only things she and Shane had brought were their travel bags from the trip to Portland the day before, and full of dirty clothes. Neither had packed a bathing suit, and jumping in the pool seemed as good a way as any of washing clothes. Two birds with one stone.

Carmen had her arms folded on the side of the pool, her chin on top. Shane had just come out to the pool, having just come from the motel’s breakfast room, where breakfast was free from 6 to 10 a.m.

“Tell me about it,” Shane said. She walked down the steps into the pool and came beside Carmen. She, too, wore shorts and a T-shirt, no underwear. Underwear wasn’t something Shane wore all that often. She folded her arms on the side of the pool, like Carmen, and rested her chin on them.

“What time is it?” Carmen asked.

“Couple minutes after ten,” Shane said.

“You get any breakfast?”

“There wasn’t much left,” Shane said. Breakfast ended at 10, and she’d got in there about five minutes before it was over. “I had some raisin bran, and decaf coffee.”

“Decaf?’

“All the regular was gone.”

“I tried to get you up at nine,” Carmen said.

“I know. Thanks.”

“What time did you get to sleep?”

“I don’t know. 1:30, maybe 2. Just before Lauren’s alarm went off. I think I got back to sleep about 5. How about you?”

“I think I finally drifted off about midnight.”

“Lauren was sound asleep by 9.”

“I know,” Carmen said. “She was snoring a little. I don’t know how she does it. She got, like, six hours sleep, right before a raid. Cop training, I guess.”

Their cell phones sat on the concrete in front of them. What they didn’t want to talk about was whether Shane’s father had been arrested for four murders, or possibly killed in a shoot-out. Or whether Lauren had been killed in a shoot-out. Or.

Whatever “or” might have been. They didn’t want to talk about it.

“You dating anybody interesting?” Carmen asked.

“You kidding? No. You know me,” Shane said.

“I was sorry to hear about you and Mollie,” Carmen said.

“Who told you about that?”

“Everybody. Jenny. Alice. Tina and Bette. Helena. It was on _Morning Joe_ and _60 Minutes_ , too.”

“You know who fucked it up? Mollie’s mother. She said I wasn’t good enough for her daughter. Then she sprang that saying you see in head shops. If you love something set free. So I did.”

“I heard.”

“And then Jenny. She fucked it up, too. Mollie wrote me a letter, she wanted to get back together, and Jenny hid it in the attic.”

“I know. It’s in Jenny’s murder file. You found it when you found the negatives. I read it.”

After a while, Shane said, “Everybody thought I did it.” She meant, killed Jenny.

“I never did.”

“I know. They told me.”

“Who’d you think did it?”

“I don’t know. I sort of thought maybe Bette. Jenny was really giving Bette grief. She was really trying to get Tina to break up. She was convinced Bette had cheated on Tina.”

“Did you talk about it?” Carmen asked.

“Not much. You know how Jenny was. You couldn’t really talk her out of something, once she got it in her head.”

“No.”

“I guess you know ... but Jenny was pretty different, back when you and she were, you know. And then she started to ... I don’t know how to describe it.”

“She got crazy. Over time. The money. The power, the fame. And her demons.”

“Yeah. The worst thing that ever happened to her was that movie. Success.”

“Can I ask ... there at the end ... were you really in love with her?”

Shane made a huffing sound. “You know me as well as anybody ever did. You know I never knew if I was in love with anybody, or not. Shit, half the time I didn’t even know I was in love with you until I fucked it all up. And then it was too late.”

Carmen thought about saying, no, it was never too late. But she said nothing.

“Can I ask ...” Shane hesitated.

“Me and Lauren?”

“Yeah.”

Carmen sighed. “Hell if I know. I think that’s the same answer I gave you in San Francisco when you asked about me and Robin. The short answer is, we haven’t done anything. She says its unprofessional. She’s working a homicide case. Police rules and regulations, blah blah blah.”

“What about when it’s over.” She meant the murder case.

“Good question. I go back to San Francisco, get on a ship, and go to sea for eight or nine months. She stays in LA and becomes a lieutenant or whatever.”

“Think she’s a keeper? I think she could be a keeper.”

“She has major keeper qualities,” Carmen said.

“Be a shame to let her get away,” Shane said.

Carmen turned her head and stared at Shane, but said nothing.

“Yeah, I know,” Shane said, grinning. “Of all people, me, giving you advice about love. And about keepers. But I actually know a little bit about keepers. Turns out I’m fairly good at spotting them. I just don’t actually try to keep them, that’s all, but it doesn’t mean I don’t know one when I see one.” She glanced at Carmen. “You know Alice claims I’ve slept with a thousand women?”

“It’s been rumored,” Carmen said, wondering in the world this crazy thread was going. This may have been the all-time craziest conversation she ever had with Shane.

“Well, I bet out of that thousand or so, a good couple hundred were keepers. Turns out, I like keepers. See, by definition keepers are sane. They aren’t crazy. You can talk to them. You don’t have to kick them out at 2 in the morning. They tend to be low maintenance. They can stay all night. They don’t go ape-shit on you, like Jenny or Paige or Cheri Peroni, or her daughter, Clea, or Lacey Driscoll.”

“So what’s the score a the end of the day, keepers versus crazies?”

“About half and half, I guess,” Shane said.

“Jesus, Carmen said. “Five hundred keepers? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Oh, no,” Shane said. “Not 500 keepers. More like maybe 50 to a 100 keepers, and 50 to a 100 total crazies. Then maybe, what’s left? About 800 or so somewhere in the middle. Not enough information on them. Quickies. Some I don’t even know their names. Some that seem maybe okay, but I just never got to know them very well. Or very long, I guess. Then there’s the one’s like Paige. It takes a while before the crazy comes out. You have to know them longer than just a day or two. There’s some, like Niki Stevens, you know they are crazies from the first 10 seconds, but it doesn’t matter.”

Carmen was utterly mystified were this was going.

“Then there was you,” Shane said.

Ah.

Carmen looked at Shane, an eyebrow cocked. Shane grinned.

“I though at first you were in the crazy category.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Well, can you blame me? We had hardly even met, and 15 minutes later we’re doing it in a major TV studio sound booth, with people all around, and you’ve got tats of jaguars on your ass and your father’s a medicine man. Couple days later, we’re doing it in a church at a video shoot. Couple days later, you ring my doorbell. I mean, what was I supposed to think? Stalker.”

Carmen mulled it over. “Well, if you put it that way. Okay, I see your point. How long did it take to realize I wasn’t a crazy?”

“Five years,” Shane said. Carmen smacked her arm. “Okay, about two or three weeks. Watching you and Jenny.” Shane was quiet for a moment, and then she said. “Out of what, a thousand women, you were the only one who went from potential crazy to absolute keeper. All-time Keeper No. 1. No question.”

Carmen worked on it. “Wow,” she finally said. “Keeper No. 1. And you still fucked it up.”

“I know. But in my defense, look at Whistler. My father. Conning Helena out of ten grand. Me finding out, right before the wedding. Him running out on Carla.”

“I know. I get it. I’ve thought a lot about it. I already told you, I know stuff now I never knew be--”

Carmen’s cell phone rang, playing The Who’s _Who Are You_ the opening theme song to _CSI_ Carmen had picked for Lauren’s cell phone ringtone. She punched the phone.

“We’re here,” she said. “You’re on speaker. Shane’s here.”

“We hit Gabe’s apartment at quarter to six,” Lauren said over the phone. “He wasn’t there. There’s a couple who live upstairs. They say he’s almost never there, but keeps all kind of crazy hours, driving a truck and making delivers, often one-and two-day trips all over the state. We found out where he works from pay stubs in his apartment, and went there. They said he he left yesterday making a trip down to San Diego. He checked in yesterday afternoon from El Centro, and they haven’t heard from him since, but they said that’s normal. He doesn’t have to check in.”

“Okay,” Carmen said. She was relieved nothing bad had happened.

“We’re going to stake out his apartment and his work. They say he should be back some time late today. We have a statewide BOLO out on him,” Lauren said.

“Does his work know why you want him?”

“No. One of the local guys went in, low key, gave them a bullshit story about Gabe being an eyewitness to a fender-bender they were checking out.”

“Suppose he calls, and they tell him that?”

“It’s a risk,” Lauren admitted, “but our guy asked them not to say anything. They seemed okay. But you never know.”

“Okay. What next?”

“I’m going back to the apartment. The locals are tearing it apart, looking for evidence. I want to see if they found anything. You guys okay at the motel?”

“We’re chillin’ in the pool,” Carmen said. “It’s how we’re washing our clothes.”

“Put some of mine on and wash them, too,” Lauren said.

“Shane and I have always wanted to get into your panties,” Carmen said.

“I don’t know why I keep giving you all the set-up lines,” Lauren said. “I’m hanging up now.”

* * *

Shane was asleep in a chaise lounge by the pool when Lauren rolled into the parking lot a little after 3 p.m. She’d been reading a paperback, but had nodded off. She woke when Lauren sat down in the chaise next to her. Lauren said back, sighed, and closed her eyes.

“And?” Shane asked.

“Nothing,” Lauren said. “Where’s Carmen?”

“Taking a nap. Neither of us got much sleep.”

“I think I’d jump in the pool right this second if I wasn’t wearing my gun,” Lauren said.

“Go change,” Shane said.

“I will. Be right back.”

Five minutes later she was back, dressed in a pair of cutoffs and a T-shirt. She dove into the pool right away, and glided underwater to the other side. “Nice,” was all she said to Shane, then sank back in and slowly breast-stroked to the far end and back. Halfway there she rolled onto her back and just floated peacefully.

Shane thought back to the time she and Lauren were in Harvey’s pool. She was certain Lauren was thinking about it, too. It was hot, sitting on the cement deck in a chaise. Shane got up and dove into the pool, too. A minutes later Carmen came out of their motel room in her booty shorts and a T-shirt and dove into the pool, too. She surfaced near the middle and went to the edge. Shane and Lauren came over and the three of them rested their arms on the edge, rested their chins and extended their legs backward, almost floating.

“Is police work always this exciting?”

“It’s usually more boring,” Lauren said. “This is about as exciting as I’ve ever experienced. Swimming in a motel pool far, far from home. Doesn’t get much better than that. You guys have lunch?”

“Peanut butter crackers and a bag of chips out of the vending machine,” Carmen said.

“I had the peanut M&Ms,” Shane said.

“Sautéed?”

“No way,” Shane said. “we’re in Napa County. I had them toasted with an infusion of diet Pepsi over an delicate pastiche of arugula, quinoa, and a plant I never heard of they imported from the side of a rock off Cape Horn. It may have been a lichen, but I’m not sure.”

“Sounds a little trendy,” Lauren said.

“I know. I’m starved,” Shane said.

“Me, too,” Lauren said.

“I know just the place for dinner,” Carmen said. “After we shower off the chlorine we can catch the early-bird specials.”

* * *

They went to the Oxbow Public Market, a popular indoor mini-mall in Napa that Carmen had visited several times before. It was only two miles up the street from Imola, on First Avenue. The building enclosed about twenty small shops and restaurants, including a micro-brewery, several wine stores, a bakery, shops that sold olive oil, cheese, roasted and unroasted coffee, chocolate, spices, produce, ice cream, and books, and a variety of restaurants featuring everything from sushi to an oyster bar to pizza and white-table-cloth fine dining. And it had an outdoor deck overlooking the Napa River. Hungry as they were, they had to browse the shops first.

“I love this place,” Lauren said. “But now you’ve got to feed me. Anybody got a choice?”

“They all look good to me,” Shane said.

“Car?” Lauren asked. “You’re the local expert.”

“They’re all good, but my go-to is usually that Western Bacon Blue Ring, the giant hamburger with the beer-battered onion ring and the crumbled Point Reyes blue cheese on it. Plus, the bacon, of course. And they put it on a toasted egg bun. The sweet potato fries are dusted with a chili powder.”

“O, M, G,” Lauren said. “I’m sold.”

“Ten-four, copy that,” Shane said.

They ate outdoors in front of the market on a patio above street level, at a table under an umbrella. The Anchor Steam beers were ice cold and the hamburgers were huge, wide as well as tall, and you had to hold one with both hands. It was difficult to talk and eat, so they ate in silence, wolfing down the burgers and making small pleasure sounds. About a third of the way into her burger, Lauren’s cell phone buzzed. She picked it up.

“Hey, Mike,” she said. “Right ... right. Anything on the BOLOs? Okay, thanks.” She hung up. “Napa police, the guy who led the raid this morning. The CSI people are all done at the house. They haven’t found anything helpful. Place is pretty much clean as a whistle. They cracked the password on his desktop computer--”

“Let me guess,” Carmen said. “The password was ‘password.’”

“Very close. Password2015. Anyway, nothing much on it. Very little e-mail. Nothing in the contacts list or other places, nothing to or from Max, nothing about Jenny. Nothing about nothing.”

Carmen nodded her head.

“What?” Lauren asked.

“He doesn’t live there,” Carmen said. “It’s a convenience address. He goes there, stays some nights, so the neighbors see his face and know who he is. Some food in the fridge, box of cereal in the kitchen cabinet. Same thing with the computer. Put in some files, get some e-mail in and out. Download some porn. Make it look superficially like it’s the computer he uses.”

Lauren looked at Shane. “This one, she’s good,” Lauren said, pointing at Carmen.

“I have her do all my murder investigations,” Shane said.

“Mike said exactly the same thing, as did all his crime scene people,” Lauren said.

“So we’re back to zero?” Shane asked.

“Not Square One,” Lauren said. “Maybe Square Two or Square Three.”

Halfway through her hamburger, Carmen paused, a frown on her face.

“Uh oh,” Lauren said.

“Lauren,” Carmen asked. “Something’s been bothering me.”

“Yes, Grasshopper?” To Shane she said, “Watch this.”

“Lauren, why do you have a fake house? Not just a false address but an actual false house to go with it? Half the college kids in America have fake driver’s licenses, but none of them has a fake house to back it up. So why have a fake apartment? Why keep it? What do you do with it? If you don’t live in it, what’s it for?”

Now Lauren frowned, too, as she worked on it. “Crap, I was really enjoying this hamburger,” she said, putting it down and taking a sip of beer. “Okay, I just threw out about five lame answers. I don’t know, why do you keep a fake house? My first thought was as a back-up, in case the cops raid your real one.”

“That was my first thought, too, until I realized something. The cops don’t know your real address. They only know the one on your driver’s license, which is listed in every computer and database in the Western Hemisphere and can be found by even a rookie cop on his first morning at the police academy.”

Lauren turned to Shane. “Here’s where she gets spooky and mystical.” She turned back to Carmen. “Okay, why do you keep a fake house?”

“To watch it. It’s an early warning system. Like the canary the miners take into the mine.”

“So it’s a bird house,” Lauren said.

But Carmen was on her path. “Go back a year. You’ve already murdered Jenny, and a day later Alice confesses, so nobody comes after you. A week later you murder two guys in Mexico, because one of them knew who you were and as soon as he learns Jenny was murdered an hour after being told Gabe McCutcheon was the blackmailer and was 20 yards away, he’s going to tell that to the cops. So you kill him then you watch and wait, but nobody comes after you. Nobody connects the two guys in Mexico to Jenny, which is why you murdered them in the first place. You watch and wait, but there’s basically no investigation of the guys in Mexico. But, maybe just to be sure, you change your identity and move to a different state. You don’t have the computer skills to switch your photo or fingerprints, but you know somebody who does. It’s the same person who helped you blackmail Jenny and Niki. Now you have a new identity and a new home in a different state. But there’s one person out there who knows who you are and what you did ... and your new name and where you live.”

“So you have yet another reason to kill her, too.”

“Right. And you do kill her. And now you watch and wait to see if someone has figured it out and comes after you.”

“At that new fake address, under that new name.”

“Right.”

“And if nothing happens and nobody comes after you, after some point you’re home free and clear.”

“Right. But how long do you have to watch and wait? Because you can’t actually live in that house, in case they come for you in the middle of the night, when you’ve had six beers and you’re sleeping it off. You can only be in that house for short periods of time, when you’re awake and alert and you can run out the back door at the first sound of a siren.”

“Got it,” Lauren said. Shane nodded.

“And one other thing,” Carmen said. “You know what else you are? It’s something we learned almost from the beginning.”

Lauren turned to Shane, her hand out, indicating Carmen. See? I told you she gets spooky.” Shane just nodded. “I’ll play, Lauren said. “What are you/”

“You’re a watcher. At Whistler you sat on the patio and watched all of us, and learned who was who, and you spotted your mark. You hung out in the house behind Shane and Jenny’s, and you watched what went on. Who came and went, who was fucking who, where Jenny went. You didn’t watch all the time, because you lived hundreds of miles away, in Imola, but you went to LA once a month--”

“--On the sixth of the month, a date chosen because your work took you to LA regularly anyway--”

“Right. And you watched the house and you watched Jenny go to the bank to get the withdrawals, and you watched her take the money to the planetarium to make the drop. And in between times you had that inside source telling you what was going on, if there was something you needed to know. Lauren, he’s a watcher. He’s watching the house on Shurtleff Avenue, waiting to see if the cops are coming for him.”

“And this morning they did. And he wasn’t there.”

“Right. And he was expected back there yesterday or last night or today anyway, according to that company he drives the truck for.”

“So where is he? What’s the thing cops say? In the wind?” Shane asked.

“No,” Carmen said. “He’s here. He’s watching the house.”

“He has line-of-sight to that house,” Lauren whispered to herself. “Like he did Jenny’s house.”

“Yes. He has patterns. He’s a watcher. He doesn’t use a gun, and he makes his murders look like accidents, at least superficially. He has no great computer skills, but he used someone who did. And like a shark he came back to his favorite feeding grounds. First, Helena, and a few years later Jenny and Niki. He’s patient, he doesn’t mind getting his blackmail payments in installments. He has two favorite drop-off locations. He likes the sixth of the month, because he makes regular trips to LA.”

“And then after the murders in Mexico, he has to break pattern, get a new identity, and move.”

“Yes. But he still uses his reliable computer expert to help him do that.”

“Until he has to get rid of him, too. There must have been a financial arrangement, and Max was desperate for money, which is no longer coming in.”

“We don’t know when Gabe got back into town, yesterday or last night or some time today. Lauren, if he had a police scanner, would he have heard anything on it?”

Lauren thought about it. “Yes and no. He wouldn’t have heard anything this morning when we hit the house, because we were on tactical silence and using secure channels. But, like an hour or two later, when he wasn’t there and we were tearing the place apart, I’m sure there was all kinds of chatter on police channels. People reporting in, advising they were departing, crime scene people radioing routine stuff back and forth. Unit 34 going to lunch. None of it would have used his name, the McKenzie name, but he wouldn’t really need that. Some of it would have said Shurtleff Avenue.”

“What’s the range of a police scanner?” Carmen asked.

“Thirty miles, more or less. That’s the figure most people use. It’s line-of-sight, though. It doesn’t bounce off satellites or anything like that. Also depends on mountain ranges, and weather. You get good transmission over water, which doesn’t apply around here, inland. Sometimes with freak weather conditions you can get a transmission 200 miles away, but you can’t predict it or rely on it. Then there’s just cheap radios and bad cables.”

“So if he’s tooling up the road from Central Valley 200 miles away he wouldn’t pick up anything until he got close.”

“No. And I suspect it wouldn’t matter. Even if he rolled into town today, he’d see a bunch of police cars in front of his place, and crime scene vans, and stuff. Cars and cops coming and going. Then nearly everybody packing up and leaving. After the sun came up, the neighbors were all out on the sidewalks, gawking and watching until they got bored and went to work, or whatever.”

“So what would Gabe do? Leave? Run like hell?”

“Let’s think about that,” Lauren said. She picked up her burger and took a big bite. Carmen and Shane did, too. Everyone chewed.

When she could talk, Carmen said, “Here’s what I think. I think he’s still here. I think he’s looking out his window. Nobody has made a move toward him, so he’s not in rabbit mode. Maybe he’s thinking about running, but he doesn’t have to do it right away. It’s daylight, there’s lots of cops in the area. He now knows they have McKenzie’s photo, which is his real photo, so every cop in Imola and Napa knows what he looks like. Maybe some of them even recognize him. Maybe the cashier at the Whole Foods store recognizes him--”

“Trust me, he doesn’t shop at Whole Foods,” Shane said. They laughed.

“Okay, Safeway and the 7-11,” Carmen said.

“You’re right,” Lauren said. “If he’s going to boogie, he’s going to do it after dark. My guess is he’s packing up and waiting for nightfall.” She looked at Carmen. “Oh, no. No. I know what you’re thinking. No. Marybeth will kill me. No.”

Carmen grinned and looked at Shane. “Let’s go get the motherfucker,” she said.

“Fucking A,” Shane said.

“Shit. No. Goddamit, there goes my career,” Lauren sighed. “Just when I was starting to get somewhere.”

* * *

They drove back to Imola.

“Okay, here’s the rules,” Lauren said, “although I think I’m wasting my breathe with you two. Rule one, you do NOT, repeat not, repeat not, get involved in any way, shape or form in anything remotely touching upon police activity, by me or anyone else. Rule two, you both slouch down and try not to get recognized. If Gabe sees and recognizes either of you, we’re cooked. We’re half-cooked already, but I don’t want to risk anything further. Ordinarily my first priority would be catching and arresting Gabe, but with you two around my first priority has to be keeping you two safe, even if it means letting Gabe get away. You are the ones responsible for compromising this, not me. Are we clear?”

“Yes, mother,” Carmen said quietly.

“Yes, mother,” Shane said from the back seat of the Mustang.

“Good. It’s still daylight, and I want to cruise around the neighborhood while we can still see everything. I don’t want you guys with your noses to the window. Try to look asleep, or bored, or stoned. Just don’t look like you’re looking.”

“Yes, mother,” Carmen said quietly.

“Yes, mother,” Shane said quietly.

Lauren sighed.

They drove down Shurtleff Avenue. “Coming up on the right,” Lauren said. “Don’t look at it.”

They drove past Gabe’s apartment building. There were no police cars, and nothing to indicate a raid had taken place that morning.

“Whose car is that in the driveway?” Carmen asked.

“People who live upstairs,” Lauren said.

“What’s he driving?” Shane asked. She couldn’t bring herself to call him “Gabe,” or “my father,” and god knows, “Dad” was out of the question. He was just going to be “he,” now and forever.

“What he drove down to El Centro was the company’s delivery truck, a GMC box truck. That’s what we have the vehicle BOLO out on. It has the company name and logo on the sides, shouldn’t be hard to recognize, but so far nobody’s seen it. His personal vehicle is a pickup. It’s in the company parking lot, where he always leaves it when he’s on the road in the company box truck. It’s still there. Locked, no keys in the ignition. We have it wired, and if anybody tries to drive it every alarm in Napa Valley’s going to go off. But he’ll probably figure that out. My guess is, by now he’s ditched the box truck somewhere, and he has some other vehicle. We’re looking for reports of stolen vehicles, but so far there’s nothing. For all we know, Gabe’s using Uber or a bicycle.”

“He either has something, or he’s getting something,” Carmen said.

They turned up the street running behind Gabe’s apartment.

“Okay, here’s where it gets serious, the next block backs onto Gabe’s apartment. This may be one of the streets where he has line of sight. Shane, would you mind just getting down out of sight?”

Shane laid down as best she could on the back seat. The Mustang had very little room in the back to begin with.

Carmen rolled down her window, ran the seat back until she almost crushed Shane, took off her shoe, rolled up her pants leg, and shucked off her polo shirt, leaving her in her black sports bra. She laid back and stuck her leg out the window. She had on a big floppy hat they’d bought at a 7-11 and big sunglasses. She had one of the empty Anchor Steam beer bottles in her hand, easy for anyone to see.

“Wow. La Pica, Mistress of disguise,” Lauren said.

“Fucking A,” Carmen said, smiling and looking out the window for all the world to see. “I just wish we had a convertible.

“Well, if I’d known you were going undercover as 17-year-old nymphet jailbait I would have gotten us one,” Lauren said.

“Am I missing something?” Shane asked, still lying down on the back seat.

“Nothing,” Lauren said. “Carmen’s naked. Go back to sleep.”

They drove down the block behind Gabe’s apartment, Carmen happily keeping up a running commentary. “Nope, nothing suspicious ... nothing suspicious ... nope... nope. A van, but nothing suspicious. Nothing... nothing...”

The drove another block, then turned and went two blocks and turned again, now paralleling Shurtleff Avenue on the other side. Carmen gawked shamelessly, noting various and sundry possible places Gabe could be using to watch his apartment. Nothing particular stood out.

They headed back to their motel. “Shane, you can come up now,” Lauren said. “Carmen, get dressed.” With one hand she picked up her cell phone and hit a speed-dial number. “Mike? Lauren Hancock. Hey, I need to borrow somebody’s car. I’m in my rental Mustang, and I just drove around the neighborhood around Gabe McCutcheon’s apartment, just scouting the landscape.... no, nothing. I want to go back when it gets dark, but I don’t want to show the Mustang image again.... your wife won’t mind? Cool. Thanks. Okay, 20 minutes.” She thumbed her cell phone off and set it down. “I’m meeting him at the police station, he’s bringing his wife’s mommy van. I’m going to drop you guys at the motel, swap cars with Mike, then I’ll come back to the motel. He doesn’t need to know you guys are here. After it gets dark, we’ll go back.”

“Copy,” Carmen said.

“Roger that,” Shane said.

* * *

Carmen sat in the passenger seat of Mike’s wife’s Kia Sorento SUV, with Shane behind her. They were parked near the end of the block of the street that had houses that possibly overlooked the front of Gabe McCutcheon’s house one block over. Carmen had argued that it was better to watch the street the overlooked the the front of Gabe’s house, not the street two blocks over that overlooked the back of his house. It was fully dark.

“So this is what a stakeout feels like,” Shane said.

“Yep. Having fun?” Lauren asked.

“It’s boring,” Shane said.

“Yep.”

“What do cops do on stakeout?”

“Nothing.”

“You talk?”

“Sometimes. But usually you already know your partner pretty well, and neither of you has much to say.”

“So, what do you talk about?”

“Not much. Any good stories, if you’ve heard one. Office gossip. Who’s fucking who, if there’s something juicy going around. Sports. Movies and TV. I mean, just basically nothing much. There’s a few cops like to talk about their families, but most partners get tired of it pretty fast.”

“Want to hear about my family?” Shane asked.

“No!” Lauren and Carmen said, simultaneously.

“Good,” Shane said. “So, who’s fucking who in the LA Sheriff’s Department.”

“Hell if I know,” Lauren said. “Nobody in the Missing Persons Unit, I can tell you that. Wanna know why?”

“I’ll bite. Why?” Carmen asked. “Because everybody’s missing?”

“You heard that one before,” Lauren said. She picked up the pair of night vision binoculars Mike had loaned her. She looked down the block. “Nothing,” she said. She sat the glasses back down on the seat beside her.

Nineteen minutes went by.

Suddenly Carmen and Lauren both sat up. Lauren grabbed the night vision glasses. “Second house from the far end,” Carmen whispered.

“I know,” Lauren said. “I saw it, too.”

“Shane?” Carmen asked from the back seat.

“A light, just for a second,” Carmen said.

“SUV in the driveway,” Lauren said. “I noted it because it was parked facing out.”

“Like for a fast getaway?” Carmen asked.

Lauren said nothing. She studied the street through the glasses. “Stay here. I’m going for a walk,” she said. She reached up, pulled the cover off the overhead light in the SUV, and pulled the bulb out. When she opened the car door, no interior light came on. She closed the door so slowly and so quietly no one could have heard it, taking the night glasses with her. She walked down the block, crossed the street to the other side, and halfway down the block she walked between two houses, and disappeared from Shane’s view through the night vision glasses.

The twenty-five minutes she was gone seemed like forever.

Finally they saw her emerge from between two houses on their own side of the street and only two houses away. Apparently Lauren had gone all the way behind the apartment, crossed the street far down the block, and come back up the street behind the houses on this side. She opened the driver’s door, got in, closed it quietly.

“Somebody’s there,” she said. “I saw a man come out of the house and put something in the SUV in the driveway. No lights came on, in the SUV or at the house.”

“Could you tell if it was Gabe?” Carmen asked.

“No.”

“You gonna call in a SWAT team?”

“Can’t. We don’t have a warrant, like we did this morning.”

“Can you get one?”

“Nope. What do we tell the judge? I saw a man put something in his car, four or five houses down and across from this morning’s suspect? Officer, why were you even watching this house? Judge, it was because of one of the two unauthorized, possibly illegal, definitely-against-protocol, non-badged, ride-along wannabes with me suggested it? Oh, and by the way, we think the suspected murderer is the daddy of my other unauthorized, possibly illegal, definitely-against-protocol, non-badged, ride-along wannabe. So could we pretty please have a warrant to raid somebody’s house in which we saw nothing illegal, have no idea who lives there, and have no earthly reason whatsoever to call in SWAT? Pretty please?”

“So you’re saying a warrant is iffy,” Carmen said.

Lauren snorted.

“So what do we do?” Shane asked quietly.

“We watch,” Lauren said. “That’s what we do on a stakeout. Stake it out.”

Shane hunkered down in the back seat. “Can I use my cell phone?” She asked.

“No,” Lauren said. “No lights, not even a glow from your cell. Gabe has to be on high, high alert after this morning. If he’s watching, I don’t want to take the slightest risk he’d see a glow. Maybe it’s one in a million, but I’d just as soon not risk it,” Lauren said.

“’Kay,” Shane said.

They watched for half an hour, Lauren and Carmen occasionally looking through the night-vision glasses.

“There he goes,” Lauren said quietly. Down at the far end of the block, in the darkness, the SUV pulled out of the driveway and turned away from them. The SUV’s headlights were off. They didn’t come on until the SUV was half a block away.

Lauren tapped on the face of her cellphone and an app came up that looked like Google Maps. Carmen could see a slowly pulsing dot.

“You put a tracker on his car?” Carmen asked. “Way to go!”

“Watch and learn, Grasshopper,” Lauren said. “He just turned left.” She started the Mustang, turned on its headlights, and started down the road. She handed her cell to Carmen. “You navigate.”

It took Carmen a moment to get oriented. “He turned right,” she said.

“Shurtleff turns to the left up here, then you go right and then left on Saratoga to get out to the 121,” Lauren said.

“You’ve been studying,” Carmen said. “Yes, he just turned left.” A moment later she said, “He just turned right onto the 121.”

They followed Gabe north on the 121 on the east side of the Napa River, opposite most of the town of Napa. Just north of the town, at Sarco Creek, the 121 branched to the right, heading northeast toward Vichy Springs and became Monticello Road. But just after the turn it dead-ended, and Gabe turned left, then an immediate right, heading north on the Silverado Trail, a secondary artery that paralleled Route 29, the main north-south highway, for some miles, linking the towns of Napa and Calistoga. They began passing by vineyards and wineries, closed now since it was after 10 p.m.

“Where the hell’s he going?” Carmen asked, mostly to herself.

In a minute or two they found out.

“I think he stopped,” Carmen said. “Blip’s not moving.”

“Okay,” Lauren said, but she kept up her speed. In a minute they passed by a small cluster of Butler buildings, something that looked like a small industrial compound. Their headlights picked up the sign at the driveway entrance, Yountville Specialty Trucking. “That’s the company Gabe drives the truck for,” Lauren said. “See anything?”

“No, it’s all dark,” Carmen said. But he could be on the other side of the building.

“The question is, why is he here?” Lauren said. They drove half a mile, over a small rise, and did a U-turn. Coming back southbound, Lauren slowed to a crawl, turned off the headlights, and crept down the shoulder. When they came over the rise the landscape was dark. The trucking company compound was on the other side of the road several hundred yards away, nothing more than a dark blot in a dark landscape, for all intents and purposes invisible. There was almost no moonlight. Lauren stopped on the shoulder, and picked up the night vision glasses.

“Can’t see anything,” she finally said. “The side of the building toward the road seems to be the front, and what looks like the parking area for trucks is around on the far side. I can see two or three trucks, and there’s probably more. I’d see the heat signature from his SUV, but it must be behind the building someplace. Otherwise I can’t see a damn thing. The blip still stationary?” she asked.

“Yes,” Carmen said. “It’s a bit off the road. But that’s all I can tell.”

“Can I see?” Shane asked. She was perched between them, leaning on the backs of their seats. Lauren handed her the night vision glasses. When she was done, Shane handed them to Carmen, who looked, too.

Nobody said anything.

Lauren lowered her window and turned off the ignition. She picked up the night vision glasses, and quietly opened her car door. “Stay in the car,” she whispered. “No taking a pee, catching a smoke, no moonlight strolls. Stay. Fucking. In. This. Car. No lights, no sound.” She closed the door so slowly and so quietly they barely heard it click. She left the key in the ignition.

Lauren was wearing dark slacks and a navy blue hoody. As she crossed the road she pulled the hood up over her head, and became nearly invisible herself. The last thing Carmen saw as Lauren crossed the road and slipped down the embankment on the far side was Lauren unsnapping her holster.

“I don’t like this,” Carmen whispered.

“Tell me about it,” Shane whispered back.

Carmen held the cellphone down between her knees so its glow wouldn’t be seen outside the car, and tapped the screen to read the time. “Ten forty-seven,” she whispered.

Twenty-seven minutes went by. Four cars and a truck went past.

They heard something. Maybe a gunshot, far away. Maybe a backfire. But there were no vehicles anywhere around.

“What was that?” Shane asked.

“Sounded like a gunshot to me,” Carmen whispered.

“Me, too.”

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck,” Carmen said.


	31. Shots Fired This Location

“She said stay here,” Shane said.

“No. She said stay in the car.” Carmen climbed over to the driver’s side, and started the Sorrento. “I’m staying in the car.” Carmen started creeping down the road, lights out, as Shane climbed into the front.

“If we’re gonna go, might as well go,” Shane said when she got seated.

“Good point.” Carmen turned on the headlight high beams and stomped on the gas. The Sorrento spewed stones and pebbles as Carmen pulled off the shoulder and as fast as she could drove the several hundred yards to the trucking company’s driveway, and turned in. The driveway and the parking lot behind the big Butler building warehouse were paved, but had seen much wear-and-tear from loaded truck traffic. The SUV bounced over potholes as Carmen shot down the driveway and around behind the building. She tapped the brakes as they rounded the corner. There was a row of trucks parked along their left, facing the loading dock of the building on the right. The area between was a hundred feet wide, and halfway down the row of trucks the headlights showed something on the ground in front of one of them. It looked like a body. Carmen sped to it, jammed on the brakes, threw the shift into Park, and jumped out.

It was Lauren.

Carmen ran to her. She was lying on her back on the ground. Shane knelt on the ground on Lauren’s left side. Lauren’s right hand was over a wound on her right side, at the bottom of her rib cage, but she held the hand funny. The pool of blood surrounding the small hole and soaking her shirt grew.

“My.. hand... broken,” Lauren whispered, eyes closed. “Sucking chest wound. Cover ... it.”

“I know what to do,” Carmen said quietly. “Don’t move. You’re going to be all right.” She carefully pulled Lauren's hand away and placed her own hands on the wound, trying to stop the blood loss. Lauren's eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. Then her eyes opened, and she looked at Carmen. "I … ."

"Shhh, don't talk," Carmen whispered. "Shane, call 9-1-1."

"Don't move, not a muscle," Gabe McCutcheon said quietly. He came out of the dark shadow between two trucks behind them. He looked ghostly red, illuminated by the Sorrento’s tail lights. Carmen and Shane turned and looked at him. He held a gun pointed at them. Carmen looked down at Lauren’s belt and the empty holster. She noticed a baseball bat on the ground near Lauren’s head.

Shane ignored Gabe and pulled her phone from her jacket pocket.

“Shane, put the phone down,” Gabe said. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Fuck you,” Shane said, but she slowly bent to put the phone on the ground. She stood facing Gabe, with Carmen and Lauren at her feet. “What are you going to do, kill us?” Her voice was calm and cold.

“Not if I don’t have to,” Gabe said. “But I have to admit, you guys sure fucked everything up the last day or two. Who’s the cop?”

“Friend of ours,” Shane said.

“Why are you here?”

“We’ve been tracking you down for the last two months.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know why? Because you killed Jenny, that’s why. And then those two guys down in Mexico. And then Max.”

“You know about all that? You guys are pretty good. What happened to that woman, Alice? She confessed. Last I knew she was in prison upstate.”

“She’s still there,” Shane said. “We’re going to get her out. Put you in prison instead.”

“I see.”

“You didn’t know we were coming after you?”

“Not until early this morning. I got home last night from my delivery run, went to bed. I got up this morning, made myself a cup of coffee, looked out the window, saw a shitload of cops pouring all over my other apartment. Was your cop friend here one of them?”

“Yes,” Shane said. “You have a lot to answer for.”

Gabe seemed to sigh. “You probably won’t believe this, but I never intended any of this.”

“We know,” Shane said. “You were blackmailing Jenny and Niki Stevens. You got a hundred grand out of them. Then Jenny hired that private detective to find out who was blackmailing her. She found out the night of the party at Bette and Tina’s house. We know you had been watching us from the vacant house behind my place. You were watching us that night. The only thing we don’t know is what happened. Did Jenny find you and confront you? Tell you to go fuck yourself?”

“She texted me she wasn’t going to pay any more. She had this bullshit story about having some stolen negatives from her movie that were worth a lot of money. She said half a million, maybe a million. She said she wanted to trade them for the videos I had of her and Niki. She said she would show me one of the reels of the movie as proof.”

“So what happened?”

“After your party started, she surprised me. Somehow she found out I was in the house behind yours. She came through the gap in the back fence and went around to the front and rang the doorbell, like she was selling Girl Scout cookies. I didn’t answer, and then she texted me. She knew it was me. She texted, I’m on your fucking doorstep, Gabe. Open the fucking door. So I did. She came in. She looked around, went upstairs, found the back bedroom. She’s standing there, looking at the back of her own house, and Bette and Tina’s back yard.”

“I bet she was pissed,” Shane said.

“Maybe,” Gabe said, “but she didn’t show it much. She was snotty and arrogant, but she mostly kept it cool. She let me have it, telling me what a bastard I was for conning Helena out of ten grand and royally fucking up your wedding. I think she was more pissed about ruining the wedding than she was about Helena’s money. She said Helena wouldn’t feel the money, it was a drop in the bucket for her. But she said you really should have married Carmen. She said Carmen was the best thing ever happened to you, and maybe you’d fuck it all up, but at least you needed the chance to give it a try.”

Shane and Gabe both looked at Carmen, who still had her hands over Lauren’s chest wound. “Shane, she’s going to die if you don’t get on the phone and call 9-1-1,” Carmen said. She looked at the baseball bat lying on the ground. “You hit her with the bat?” Carmen asked.

“Yeah. I don’t carry a gun. Never did. Never used one on anybody.”

“Well, good for you,” Carmen said. “Shane, hand me the bat. I’m going to try to splint Lauren’s arm with it. Take off your shirt, tear the sleeves off.”

“Shane, get out of the way,” Gabe said. She was standing between him and Carmen and Lauren.

“No,” Shane said.

Shane looked at Gabe for a moment, then picked up the baseball bat and sat it down next to Carmen, She quickly started removing her shirt.

“How’d you know we were watching you?” Carmen asked.

“Night vision glasses,” Gabe said. “Same as you guys. Everybody’s got them, now.”

“Did you know we were following you from Imola?”

“No. Never saw you. But when I got here I want to make sure nobody was around.”

“Why did you come here?” Carmen asked.

“The office safe,” Gabe said. “I’m getting as far away from here as far as I can, as fast as I can. I thought I’d break into the safe, take whatever cash there was.”

Shane was busy trying to rip the sleeves from her shirt to give Carmen something to use to splint Lauren’s arm. She finally got them to rip off.

“I was looking around with the glasses when I saw your car creep over the rise with the lights out,” Gabe said. “That’s the first time I knew there was a problem. Then I watched Lauren sneaking up. You know what was funny? Me watching her with night vision glasses when she was looking at me with night vision glasses.”

“She didn’t see you?” Shane asked, handing the sleeves of her shirt to Carmen.

“No. I ducked down when I saw her.”

“And then you ambushed her with the baseball bat.”

“She had her gun out,” Gabe said. “What would you do?”

“Well, I wouldn’t shoot her,” Shane said.

“No choice,” Gabe said. “I got her gun but she came after me anyway. She tried some of that karate-kicking bullshit stuff. So I shot her.”

“Shane, come over here and put your hands on her chest wound while I try to splint her arm.”

“Shane, get out of the way,” Gabe said. She was standing between him and Carmen and Lauren.

“No,” Shane said. “You’re not going to kill them. I won’t let you.”

“You going to stop me?”

“If I have to.”

“That’s a good one. You’re coming with me.”

“The hell I am. Just get in your car and go.”

“Can’t do that, not with you guys here. I’m sorry, Shane, but I can’t leave them alive.”

“I told you, I’m not going to let you kill them. You killed Jenny, you killed Max.”

“Jenny ran out of the house, I ran after her. She ran up the steps, she was going to get you guys, and when I caught up to her she hit me, so I hit her back. She went off the deck. It was an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident when you rolled her into the pool,” Shane said. “It wasn’t an accident when you poisoned Max with vodka and Oxy, and then ran her down.”

“I never intended any of that to happen,” Gabe said.

“Max was helping you, wasn’t he? He helped you videotape Jenny and Niki. How much was his share of the blackmail?”

“She wanted thirty percent,” Gabe said.

“He was a he, not a she,” Shane said.

“Like you fucking care,” Gabe said.

“I do care,” Shane said. “I didn’t like Max much, but he went through a lot of shit. You murdered him, plain and simple.”

“Nothing’s ever plain and simple,” Gabe said. “Get out of the way.”

“No.”

“Shane, I need you here,” Carmen said. She hoped her diversion would keep Gabe and Shane from getting into each other’s faces. Gabe had the gun. “I need to splint her arm. I need you to keep pressure on the wound. He’s not going to shoot us in the back.”

Shane glared at Gabe, turned, and knelt beside Carmen. She put her hands over top of Carmen’s so when Carmen pulled away she could keep pressure on the gunshot wound.

“You okay, Lauren?” Carmen asked quietly.

“No,” Lauren whispered.

“We’re going to switch hands now. Shane, you ready?”

“Yes.” She lowered her hands directly over top of Carmen’s on the right side of Lauren’s chest. “Go,” she said.

Carmen slowly withdrew her hands from Lauren’s chest and Shane began pushing down, keeping pressure on the wound.

Carmen let out a big sigh. “Stay still. I’m going to splint your arm.”

“Not going ... anywhere,” Lauren said.

“Good,” Carmen said. “This may hurt a little.”

Carmen picked up the baseball bat Shane had set down beside her and stood, bending over. Then she whirled around with the bat and threw it, tomahawk style, as hard as she could at Gabe, who was standing about ten feet away. He fired Lauren’s gun, but he was flinching backward in the microsecond, and the bullet went past Carmen. The bat windmilled into Gabe’s arm, chest and smashed his face, and he dropped the gun. Carmen and Shane both dove for it; Shane was closer and faster. She stood with it facing Gabe, whose face was bloody. Blood streamed from his nose. Somehow he had hung unto the bat.

Carmen whirled back to Lauren, knelt and put her hands back over the chest wound.

“Shane, get the phone. Don’t take your eyes off him, but get the phone and call 9-1-1, now,” Carmen said.

Gabe covered his bloody nose with his left hand, but he held the handle of the bat in his right. He stepped toward Shane, raising it.

“Freeze, motherfucker,” Shane said.

“Shane, pick up the phone and give it to me. I’ll call. I can do it one-handed.”

Shane back away from Gabe and toward Carmen and Lauren. She looked down to where her phone was lying. She bent to pick it up. Gabe took a step forward with the bat.

“I told you to freeze, motherfucker,” Shane said.

"What are you gonna do, shoot your own father?" Gabe asked.

"You're not my father," Shane said. "My father died in a car crash in 1998 when an 18-wheeler jack-knifed across the 410."

A look of confusion clouded Gabe's face. "I don't know what that means," he said.

"I know," Shane said. "Let's keep it that way. You're just a sperm donor. You're just some guy too fucking dumb to wear a condom when you knocked up my mother. That's your only relationship to me. You're the poster boy for access to birth control. I'm the poster girl."

"That's not how it—"

Shane pulled the trigger. The bullet passed between Gabe's calves, harmless, and buried itself in the macadam behind him, because Shane had deliberately fired to miss, although she really didn't give a shit if it hit him in the shin or not.

"Shut the fuck up," Shane said.

Gabe raised his hands as if in surrender. "Hey," was all he said.

"Turn around," Shane said.

"Going to shoot me in the back?" Gabe asked, turning around, his hands about halfway up.

"Up the ass," Shane said. "I told you to shut up. So shut up." When she was satisfied Gabe was complying, she took her attention off him and attempted to dial her cellphone with just the thumb of her left hand. It wasn't easy.

"Shane, hurry," Carmen said quietly.

"I know," Shane whispered, but she was distracted enough she failed to see Gabe turn and rush her. He only had to take two steps. He swung the bat at Shane’s head as she raised the gun and fired.

The bat glanced off Shane’s head above her ear. It made a sickening sound, and Shane dropped in a heap. Her shot had hit Gabe in the middle of the chest; he staggered back once, then fell over backward. Carmen screamed, “No!” and jumped up. She ran to the gun on the ground, halfway between Shane and Gabe. She picked it up and looked down at Gabe. There was a big blood stain on the middle of his chest. He looked dead, or close to it. She ran to Shane and picked her up in her arms. “Shane? Shane?”

The side of Shane’s head was a bloody mess. She looked dead, too. Carmen grabbed the phone and ran back to Lauren. She put the gun down where she could get it if Gabe McCutcheon so much as twitched one fucking inch. She put her left hand back over Lauren’s chest wound and dialed the cellphone one-handed.

When the 9-1-1 dispatcher answered, Carmen said, “I need help. There’s been a shooting. We’re at the Yountville Specialty Trucking yard.”

“What’s the situation?” the dispatcher asked.

“Police officer down, perp down, a third person down. We need a bus! Buses, three busses!” Carmen shouted at the phone.

Lauren opened her eyes. “Airships,” she whispered.

Carmen looked at her. “What?”

“Airships. We call medical choppers airships. Not buses.” She closed her eyes.

“Airships! We need three airships, now. Right now! Now!” She looked down at Lauren. She was smiling.

“Don’t hang up the phone,” the dispatcher said.

“I won’t,” Carmen said, putting it on speaker and setting it down.

“Don’t go away,” Lauren whispered.

“I was gonna go for coffee but I guess it can wait,” Carmen said. “You, too. Don’t go away.”

“Doing my best,” Lauren smiled, her eyes still closed.

“Lauren?” Carmen asked, scared shitless.

“Copy that,” Lauren whispered. “Ten-four. Rodger dodger.” After a moment she added, “Where is everybody?”

“They’re here,” Carmen said.

“Dead?”

“I don’t know. Shane’s hurt real bad. Gabe bashed her on the side of the head. There’s blood everywhere. I don’t think I can do anything.”

“What about him?”

“Shane shot him. Sucking chest wound, same as you. I figured I could only try to save one of you. It was you or him. I gave it a lot of thought, and the vote was real close, but you edged him out. Only one vote apart, one to zero. A nail-biter.”

“Yeah, well, you were always an easy touch for a gal with nice tits. Can you keep Shane warm? I’m worried about her going into shock.”

“No, I can’t move. I’m putting pressure on your wound.”

“Oh. I thought you were just trying to feel me up but your aim was bad.”

“I’m multitasking. I think you should stop talking. And trust me, there’s nothing wrong with my aim. How’s the pain?”

“Arm hurts like a bastard. I’m pretty sure he broke everything in my hand. Chest doesn’t hurt much. Kind of burns.”

They were quiet for a while.

“Car?”

“Yeah?”

“We got the motherfucker.”

“We did.”

“Marybeth will be happy about that.”

“Under the circumstances, I’m not so sure. Heavy price to pay. Please try to be quiet.”

They were quiet again, for a minute.

“Car, please call my parents.”

“Sure. What do you want me to say?”

“Tell them I’ve been thinking about a spring wedding. Or I’ve been killed in the line of duty. Depending on how fast the airships get here.”

“You’re not dying on my watch, so forget it,” Carmen said. “Spring wedding, huh? Big or little? You wearing white? I didn’t know you were a virgin. Can I be the DJ?”

“Small, informal. Maybe on the beach at sunset. Everybody barefoot. And then no, no, and no, in that order.”

“What’s your cell phone password? For when I call your folks.”

“Sixty-nine sixty-nine sixty-nine. Six numbers, then exclamation point.”

“Really? Jesus. Is that wishful thinking or the sum total of your love life?”

They heard a siren in the distance.

“About time,” Carmen said.

“Tell EMTs…” Lauren’s voice faded.

“Lauren? Lauren?”

“Tell them … A-positive, no allergies, no medications.”

“Great tushy. Killer tits. Likes cuddling, walks in the rain and pina coladas.”

“Great tushy? Really?”

“Just guessing. Same about the tits.”

“Really tired,” Lauren whispered.

“Then shut the fuck up. Jeez, yack yack yack. You get shot one little time, you’re all Chatty Kathy.”

The siren got louder, and there was more than one.

“Car?”

“Yes?”

“I hope Shane makes it.”

“I do, too.”

“She shot her father.”

“Yes.”

“That’s going to leave a mark.”

“That’d be my guess, too. But he had it coming. He killed four people, then shot a cop, maybe killed his own daughter.”

Lauren grew quiet, her eyes closed.

After a minute, Carmen asked, “Lauren?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing. They’re coming.”

“I know. You don’t have to keep me awake. I don’t have a concussion.”

“I know. But every time you close your eyes and stay quiet it scares the living shit out of me.”

“Oh. Sorry to inconvenience you. Tell Marybeth …”

“Tell her what?”

“Tell her I’m sorry I fucked up.”

“How did you fuck up?”

“I got shot, with my own gun.”

“Oh. That. No, I’m not going to tell her you fucked up. Let her work it out for herself. Are you in much pain?”

“I got shot, didn’t I? Try to pay attention. Yes, it burns. My hand hurts like a motherfucker.”

“Boy, you got up on the wrong side of the bed. Here I am, keeping you alive, keeping air out of your chest cavity, and all I get is wise-ass whining.”

“I thought you liked me wise-ass.”

“No, you’re confused. What I said was, I like you, comma, ass-wise.”

“Oh. That’s different. Never mind.”

“Now we’re doing Roseanne Roseannadanna.”

“Car?”

“Yeah”

“When did you say you liked my ass?”

“Didn’t I tell you? Maybe it was somebody else.”

“Somebody else you told, or somebody else’s ass you liked.”

“Lauren, you’re making my head hurt.”

“Just holding up ... my end ... conversation.” She closed her eyes.

The first of many police cars arrived.


	32. Who Lives, Who Dies

Two doctors, a fourth-year resident who was a woman and a third-year who was a man, sat slouched in their chairs in their rumpled scrubs in the doctor’s lounge off the ER of San Francisco General Hospital, watching a re-run of _Grey’s Anatomy_. A third doctor, also a resident and a man, slept on the couch, turned with his back to the TV and the room.

It was after 2 a.m. and the hospital had quieted for the night, as it did some nights, not others. The ER had been busy, but not unusually so. The menu had been the usual: several respiratory distress, all predictably of old people; a few broken bones, some flu cases that got more serious than they should have; three different bar fights; the average number of walk-ins. The murder rate around the entire bay region was up slightly, especially in Oakland across the bay, averaging about two murders every three days. There were none in San Francisco this night. So far.

Another young doctor came into the lounge and took a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator. He uncapped it and took a drink. He looked at the TV. “Which one is this?” he asked.

“The one where Meredith is in the OR, and there's a guy with a bazooka round inside of him. She's got it in her hand. Kyle Chandler's the bomb tech,” the male third year said.

“Who's Kyle Chandler again?”

“Coach on _Friday Night Lights,_ ” the woman resident said.

“Right, right.”

“And Dr. Bailey's having her baby. George is her birth coach,” she said.

The doctor with the bottle of orange juice watched for a moment, then left the room.

“Dammit, we're losing him. Push one of epi,” said the third-year.

On the TV screen McDreamy said, “Dammit, we're losing him. Push one of epi.”

* * *

At the ER nurses station a phone rang, and one of the two nurses there picked up. “OR, this is Larkins.” She listened. “Got it. Nine minutes out.” She hung up and turned to the other nurse. “Three bad ones incoming. Two gunshots and a head trauma. All three airships. Let's scramble everybody.”

* * *

In the ER lounge the female resident said laconically, “O'Malley, stop looking at my va-jay-jay.”

On the TV screen Dr. Bailey said, “George?”

George said, “Yes?”

Dr. Bailey said, “Stop looking at my va-jay-jay.”

The wall phone rang and the resident reached back without taking her eyes from the TV. “Yeah?” She listened for a moment. “How bad's the head trauma?” She listened. “Okay, get Hopkinson and his team in, stat. We'll take the two gunshots, and stabilize the head trauma until he gets here. What rooms?” She listened, then hung up. “Let's go, guys. Three inbound, first one on the roof in eight minutes. Two sucking chest wound gunshots, one cracked skull.”

“Gangbangers?” the third-year asked.

“No. Some kind of domestic, I think. And one gunshot is a cop. Maybe he was trying to break up a spat. Anyway, all three are circling. We could lose all of them. Howard, move your ass.” Circling meant circling the drain. She and the third-year hurried out.

Howard, the no-longer-sleeping resident, sat up and rubbed his eyes, watching Meredith Grey hand the mortar round carefully to Kyle Chandler in the _ER_ ER. Chandler walked slowly down the hall with the bazooka round in his hands. Grey came out into the hall and watched him walking toward the exit doors. Then the mortar round exploded, killing Chandler and sending Grey down the hall on her back, the blast wave rippling through her hair in slow motion as pieces of who knows what spattered her face.

“Fuck!” Howard murmured. He stood and hurried from the room without turning the TV off. 

* * *

It took the lead paramedic on scene only a minute to look at Shane’s head wound, then at Lauren and Gabe’s gunshots to validate what he’d already suspected: They all needed a level 1 trauma center, and that meant San Francisco General, the only level 1 in the region. It was 30 miles away by air, by that didn’t matter. Flying at 120 knots, it would get there in 15 minutes, and it would take that long to get anywhere else on the ground. They’d already lost half the “Golden Hour.” The head trauma looked really bad; that one would go first. The cop was crashing, but he thought she’d probably make it, so she went second. The cops told him the cop shooter was the third one, the other gunshot, wanted for four other murders. The paramedic didn’t think the bad guy was going to make it, but fuck it. If the cop shooter was still alive when the third chopper sat down, he’d go to San Francisco General, too. The EMT got on the radio with dispatch and told them that yes, they really did need three airships. Two were already in the air, because the first Napa County sheriff’s deputy on scene, who was stationed barely two miles away at the Yountville substation, had confirmed to dispatch that one of the gunshots was a cop, a fellow county sheriff’s detective, and they didn’t want a one of them dying in the line of duty on their turf. They had to scramble to find a third chopper, but they got one, three minutes behind the first two. When dispatch got that all set up, they started calling, waking up every law enforcement official in Napa Valley above the rank of corporal. Cop and serial murderer perp both shot and both “likely,” in police terminology. “Likely” wasn’t a good thing. “Likely” meant “circling the drain.”

The first medevac chopper touched down on the roof, met by the two residents, two nurses and a tech, all gowned and gloved. The chopper crew helped them transfer Shane’s gurney from the chopper to the hospital’s rolling gurney. Her head was turned to the right so the wound on the left side faced up. She was intubated, on oxygen, and had a saline IV. A chopper paramedic cupped his hands and shouted in the third-year’s ear, “Depressed skull fracture, hit with a baseball bat, left side of her head. Glascow Scale 7, BP125 over 70, pulse thready. She’s A-positive, no allergies. No drugs or alcohol on board.” He shouted, “Good luck,” but they were already wheeling Shane into the building as fast as they could safely go.

The second medevac airship arrived and hovered nearby, waiting for the first chopper to lift off and get out of the way. When it landed it was met by the resident named Howard, another ER doctor, and more nurses and techs. Lauren was also intubated, getting oxygen and plasma. While they got Lauren’s gurney off the chopper a paramedic shouted in Howard’s ear, “Gunshot, sucking chest wound, right lung, no exit wound, BP’s all over and crashing. Broken right wrist and hand, smashed with a baseball bat. She’s O-positive, no drugs or alcohol. Oh, she’s a cop from LA. Better not lose her.”

“No shit,” Howard said.

As they were getting ready to move Lauren into the building, the paramedic helped Carmen jump down from the chopper. She was covered with blood.

“You hurt?” Howard shouted over the rotor noise.

“No,” Carmen yelled back. “It’s her blood. I had my hands over the bullet hole, and I was trying to give her CPR.”

“Let’s go go go!” One of the techs shouted and they hurried inside with Lauren, Carman hanging on to the gurney.

By the time they got Lauren off the roof Shane was already in an operating room where a neurosurgeon was getting ready to remove a piece of her skull to relieve the pressure of her swelling brain. The best they could do was let Carmen peer into a window of the operating room for a moment, but all she could see was a team of blue- and green-gowned blobs gathered around a table. Several of the ghostly blobs wore colorful, humorous caps with cartoon characters. There were tubes, bright lights, trays of medical tools. Monitors showed squiggly lines, but Carmen had no idea what they meant, other than that Shane was still alive. She could tell from the tension of their body language they were working quickly. Efficiently, but quickly. One of them was throwing bloody swabs toward a small metal tray. When he missed, a nurse picked the swab up and put it in. This was no routine appendectomy; nobody laughed, or chatted about their weekend plans or the last episode of _The Bachelor_.

Lauren was in the next operating room, where a similar scene of organized chaos was going on, doctors, nurses and techs in scrubs going in and out, units of blood arriving.

There were three different people at the nurses’ station urgently making phone calls, calling staff and administration people, bringing some in and just keeping others up to speed until daylight.

Gabe McCutcheon was in the third OR, and the only difference between that room and the other two was the police officer at the door, although no one expected Gabe to get up and make a break for it. It was just protocol, that’s all.

After a minute a nurse led Carmen away to the waiting room and promised to keep her updated. It was quarter to two in the morning.

"Could I get a blanket?" Carmen asked. The air conditioning had gotten through to her, and all she was wearing were thin scrubs. For the first time in what seemed like hours, she realized she was cold. They had taken her blood-spattered clothes because they came from a crime scene. Protocol.

"Sure, honey," the nurse said, and returned in a moment with a blanket that had come straight from the warmer.

"Do you know who the doctor is working on Shane?" Carmen asked.

"That's Dr. Hopkinson. He's our best neurosurgeon. We called him in when the Medevac told us we had a bad one. Your friend is in good hands."

“What about Lauren?”

“The police officer? I didn’t know her name. Dirty Harry’s got her.”

“Dirty Harry?”

“From the movie. Yeah, they call him Harry Callahan because he’s so good with gunshot wounds, but his name is actually Manoosh. He’s from Pakistan, but he’s the best there is. We say, do you feel lucky today? Because if you are, you get Dr. Manoosh. He’s the best there is.”

Carmen nodded and thanked her. She wrapped herself in the warmed blanket and lay down on a sofa in the empty waiting room. She turned her back to the room, and although she had intended to remain awake however long it took, she cried herself to sleep.

She was awakened shortly after 6 a.m. by someone gently shaking her shoulder. She turned over and was startled to see a tall, thin man in blue hospital scrubs leaning over her. He was in his late forties, and had hairy arms. He still had his scrub cap on his head, and his mask dangled down around his chest.

"The nurse says you're the person waiting to hear about Miss, ah, Mc..."

"McCutcheon," Carmen said, rubbing her eyes and sitting up on the sofa.

"Yes, McCutcheon. Shane, that’s her first name, is that right? I apologize. I take it you are a relative of hers?"

"I'm her life partner," Carmen lied, knowing full well that if you weren't a relative, spouse or life partner the doctors wouldn't talk to you. Fortunately, they were in San Francisco, where everyone knew about life partners and dealt all the time with gay and lesbian couples, married and unmarried. All you had to do was say the magic words, life partner, and you were in like Flynn in the city by the bay.

"Scoot over," the doctor said. Carmen made way for him and he sat down next to her. She could tell he was tired. He removed the scrub cap from his head and ran his hands through his hair. "I'm Dr. Hopkinson, I'm a neurosurgeon, I was her main surgeon, and I'll be in charge of her case for a while, at least. Unfortunately, I don't have too much to tell you, Miss...?"

"Morales, Carmen Morales. Please, tell me everything."

"Miss Morales. Your partner came through the operation, in terms of her vital functions. She's stable, and I think she's going to stay that way. We lost her once during the night--"

Carmen gasped and her hand flew to her mouth in horror. Dr. Hopkinson gently put his hand on her arm. "It's all right," he said, "we brought her back right away with the paddles. No big thing, happens all the time. She wasn't gone but for maybe twenty, thirty seconds at most. But what I was saying is we don't know yet how she's doing in terms of the brain injury, and it's way too soon to do any testing. She's in a coma. Right now it's a medically induced coma to reduce swelling. But after we stop keeping her in our coma, she might or might not stay in the coma longer. But how long she'll be that way no one can say. A day, a week, a month, no one knows."

"Maybe forever?"

He looked her in the eyes and nodded. "Yes, it's possible. With these kinds of injuries you just can't tell. She might wake up in a two or three days and be perfectly fine, her normal self, except for a world-class headache. Or there could be some damage and loss of functions, although we can't predict in her case which ones. Speech, language, movement, memory, who knows. The chances are very high that she'll have some retrograde amnesia, and won't remember what happened, but for how long before nobody knows. Could be she won't remember just the two or three minutes before she got hurt, or a few hours, or even a few days, but by and large that's not too important as long as she remembers all the important things, like who she is and who you are, and so on.

"In injuries like this, the brain swells, so we cut out a piece of her skull to relieve the pressure. Her skull was fractured, which actually turns out to be a good thing, in a way, because that actually helped relieve the swelling. The bones themselves will eventually knit back together, and that won’t be a problem. When the swelling goes down in a day or so, we'll put back the bone we took out to create the gap. Also, to help reduce the swelling, we put her in a special cooling apparatus that significantly lowers her body temperature, so she’s in artificial hypothermia. We'll be closely monitoring her for infection, of course, and hemorrhaging and swelling, but by and large those are pretty manageable and I don't anticipate any problems. In a day or two, when the swelling is gone, we'll warm her back up and remove her from the medical coma. Then it's just a guessing game after that. What I want to tell you is, she has a skull fracture and serious concussion, which is certainly serious enough, but I want to immediately also say to you it could have been one hell of a lot worse. Here’s what you need to know. Inside the skull the brain is surrounded by three layers of membranes. The outermost one is called the dura. It’s where we get the word subdural from, if you’ve ever heard of a subdural hematoma, which just means bleeding beneath the dura, between the dura membrane and the inner membrane. You with my so far?"

Carmen nodded, but Hopkinson could see the fear in her eyes was still there.

“When the skull fractures, things start to get really serious when the dura is ruptured and bone fragments break through it, and also if and when there’s bleeding beneath it, like from a stroke. So here’s the good news, and I want you to hold onto this. Shane’s dura was not broken, only bruised. That means nothing got into her brain, which is a really good thing. However, there was some bleeding, which is usually what happens in a case like this. Now, what I’m going to tell you sounds a lot worse than it really is. When there’s bleeding inside the brain, we sometimes have to drill a hole through the dura to drain the blood out, and that’s what we did with Shane. I had to drill a hole and let the blood drain out.”

Carmen’s face turned pale and he put an arm around her.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m scaring you to death, but I’m actually trying to reassure you. I drill holes in people’s heads all the time, and I’m really good at it. Some day a few years from now you guys are going to have a joke about how Shane had a hole in her head. How she just chilled out. You’ll laugh. Okay?”

Carmen nodded.

“Good. So what she has is called a traumatic brain injury, we called it a TBI. You hear about them all the time now from car crashes, and also from place like Afghanistan, from those roadside bombs, and those football players whose brains have been traumatized by all those tackles. So you’re going to be seeing the initials TBI a lot from now on. Shane’s TBI seems to be pretty mild, as far as we can tell right now, and we’ll do a lot of testing in the next day or two, but we need to see what happens after she wakes up to make a full assessment of how much damage there might or might not be.”

"What kind of odds?" Carmen whispered. The truth was, Dr. Hopkinson had frightened the wits out of her.

He shrugged. "Case like this, I'd say, oh, sixty percent chance she comes out fine, twenty-five percent there's some temporary loss of function, maybe five or ten percent chance of permanent, debilitating long-term damage, and maybe five percent chance of permanent irreversible coma. But look," he said, taking both her hands in his, "I want you to think about the 60 percent chance she'll be good as gold, okay? She needs you to do that, to keep thinking good thoughts, and I need it, too, okay? Can you do that?"

Carmen nodded.

"Good," he said.

"When can I see her?"

"You can look in the window, but that's all today and probably tomorrow. The day after, when the bone is back in place and she's warmed up and off the coma drugs, we'll let you in the room for a few minutes, although you'll be wearing gloves and scrubs and a mask, and so on. We're really serious about the risk of infection. But just as soon as possible, I want you to hold her hand and talk to her; I want her to hear your voice, okay?"

Carmen nodded. "Can she hear me?"

"Nobody knows, but a lot of us in the field think that unconscious people, even in comas, at some level hear what's going on. I believe some do, some don’t. There’s been some reports by people who wake up from comas, saying they heard everything. If I'm right, then it's important for her to know you are there. If I'm wrong and she doesn't hear, well, there's no harm done. But until I learn otherwise, let's operate on the assumption she can hear you and needs to hear you. You with me?"

Carmen nodded again. "Yes, oh yes, anything. I'll be here every day, all day every day."

"I know you will," he said, "but you have an additional responsibility, which is to take care of yourself, too. Too many relatives and spouses and partners burn themselves out and get exhausted keeping the vigil. You need to go home, get some rest, take a shower, probably make a bunch of telephone calls, right? Nothing's going to happen today and tomorrow, so you need to prepare yourself for when you come back. Understand what I'm saying? It's going to take its toll on you. So you need to be fit and rested and strong. You have to pace yourself. You ever play sports?”

“I was captain of my high school volleyball and basketball teams,” Carmen said.

“Okay, so then you know. We don’t do sprints, we do marathons where we don’t know how long the course is. You're a long-distance runner on my team, now, and we're both on Shane’s team. I want Shane’s team in top shape and ready to go. But like long-distance runners, we have to pace ourselves."

Carmen gave him a weary smile.

"Go home," he said. "I know it's hard, but get some rest. We'll call you if anything happens, but nothing will. I’ve got this, okay?" He put his hand under her elbow and helped her to her feet. He took her blanket from her. "Do you live far? Do you have a car here? Do you need a ride? The concierge desk can get you a taxi, if you need it."

“I’ll be fine,” Carmen said. “Do you know anything about Lauren Hancock?”

“That the police officer? No, I don’t know anything except she’s still in OR and people are working on her.”

“So she’s still alive,” Carmen whispered. “Thank god.”

“Yes. I can tell you this much. She must be fairly stable, because all the panic has stopped and people are just going about their work quietly and calmly. That’s always a good sign. But I’ll find someone to give you a proper update.”

* * *

After she drove home Carmen spent nearly three hours on the phone, talking to Alice, Kit, Helena, and Tina and Bette in New York, and telling them everything that had happened and everything about Shane's condition and prognosis. She called her mom to put her mind at ease. There were many tears, especially from Alice, whose role in everything had been so central. Alice insisted she’d come to San Francisco from Humboldt the minute they let her out, and since Carmen insisted Alice at least stay with her rather than stay at a hotel. Kit and Helena both vowed to come up as soon as possible.

Carmen spent most of the rest of that day and all of the next being interviewed by a succession of police, including Marybeth and Jack, who’d hurried up as soon as the learned what had happened. She no sooner got done with the police when Lauren’s parents and brother and sister arrived. After introducing herself, Carmen had to explain to them everything all over again from the very beginning.

On the second morning after her all-night surgery, they stopped the coma medication, removed the cooling system and began to warm up Shane's body. By late afternoon she was back up to normal temperature, although she was still on the ventilator and still in the coma. The next day they replaced the bone in her head and sewed her up. Carmen had stayed in the waiting room, and about seven that evening they let Carmen gown up and go into Shane’s ICU unit for the first time. Dr. Hopkinson, a nurse and a tech were in the room, but stepped to the other side of the room to give Carmen a small bit of privacy. Kit, who had just arrived from LA, peered in the window.

Carmen gently picked up Shane's limp hand, mindful of the IV tubes in her arms.

"Hey, baby, I'm here," she said. "Nobody knows if you can hear me, but I just know that you can, okay? And I just wanted you to know I'm here, and I'm not gonna leave. I'm gonna be here every single day, all day, all night, until you wake up. So I just wanted you to know that, okay? Marybeth is getting the paperwork, and she’s gonna go up to Humboldt and get Alice out of prison. Kit just got here a little while ago, too, and wanted me to tell you hello and say how much she loves you. And I talked to Bette and Tina in New York, and they said to tell you how much they love you, too, and they both said to tell you little Angelica is doing great and wanted to say hello and tell Auntie Shane to hurry up and get all better. It's hard to believe how big she's getting, you know? Anyway, I talked to her for a minute, too, and she's going to draw a special giant-size get-well card and send it to you, so you need to be awake and alert when it gets here, and that's an order from your niece Angelica, so you just better listen up and do it. Okay, they're looking at me and my time's up right now, but I'll be here and I'll come talk to you again as soon as they let me. Okay, I gotta go."

Carmen choked up as she said these last words, and tears ran from her eyes down into her surgical mask. She leaned over carefully and kissed the back of Shane's hand through the mask, and hurried to leave the room. The moment she got outside Kit took her in her arms and rocked her while she sobbed.

* * *

Carmen knocked quietly on the door jamb. The bandaged figure in the bed was wired up but the oxygen mask had come off and she seemed to be breathing room air. She was hooked up to IV bags running to her left arm, and a big monitor was beeping and showing waves of heart rhythms and other important numbers. Her right arm was covered from fingertips to elbow in what looked like a massive cast supported by a sling wired to the ceiling. Lauren Hancock didn't move her head, but she could see Carmen standing in the doorway. She weakly lifted her left hand and waved her in.

"Hey," Carmen said. "They said I could have a few minutes. I just wanted you to know I've stopped by a few times a day every day to see how you're coming along. Today’s the first day they’d let me talk to you. Boy, you had a lot of people worried about you."

"So they tell me," Lauren said. Her voice was raspy and weak.

"But the good news is they say you'll make a full recovery. You lost a lot of blood, but they put most of it back, plus some other fluids and stuff, too, so that's good. I donated a pint of blood myself, and if we're a match, I might be inside you right now."

"You wish."

Carmen laughed. "You don't?"

"I'd have picked a different method," Lauren said. "They said you saved my life."

"Well, I don't know, I just did what had to be done, no heroics. There was a hole in the dyke and I just put my finger in."

“Not like it was your first time.”

“First dyke, no. First gunshot wound, yes.”

Lauren laughed and coughed. "Don't make me laugh, I'm not sure I'm allowed to laugh yet, it makes my chest hurt. But I wanted to say thanks."

"Hey, DJ La Pica is a full-service entertainment experience. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, quincineras, shootings, homicide investigations, life-saving, blood donations, you name it, we do it all."

"How's Shane? They told me she's in a coma."

"Yeah, she always was a heavy sleeper. All the machines they hooked up to her brain seem normal, which is a sentence about Shane I never thought would come out of my mouth. The brain swelling has been controlled and is coming down. But the short answer is she's alive, but that's all we know."

"I'm so sorry."

"I know. Me, too. And about you, too."

"They tell me Shane got him. I heard the gun go off."

"Yes, she did. She grabbed the gun and shot him just when he hit her with the bat. She jumped in front of him to stop him shooting me like he did you. He died on the operating table here. He was in the room next to you. I gotta tell you, the ER was really humming that night, with all three of you in there. I never saw so many doctors and nurses yelling out orders and people running in and out. They saved two out of three, and far as I’m concerned they got the right two, and tough shit about the third one. Good riddance."

"Guess the cops must have interviewed you all night long. Marybeth give you the third degree? Beat you with a rubber hose?"

"All the next day, and the day after. Everybody was here, starting with Marybeth. Your county sheriff was here, that guy Jack from Homicide, and some A.I.D. types and some sort of shooting team, and a shooting team from the locals. I had to start from the very beginning with all of them, because only Marybeth and Jack knew the background. Jenny's murder and Alice's confession, then Max's murder and the private eye guy's suspicious drowning, the whole story."

"What did Marybeth say? She in trouble?"

"Oh, no, she did great. First, she took responsibility for assigning you to the case. Gabe was considered a missing person, and Max was, too, before him. And the private eye and the boat captain really were missing persons cases, in a way, just in a foreign country. I think they all knew better, but they were willing to let Marybeth float on it. Anyway, remember when she called Jack and he let her run with the case? He backed her up."

"Okay, good to know."

"Another thing you need to know."

"What's that?"

"You're getting some kind of citation or medal or something."

"What, for getting shot?"

"Yeah, go figure. I only overheard some talk in the hallway, but it's above my pay grade--”

“Everything’s above your pay grade when you aren’t on the payroll.”

“Picky, picky. Anyway, you are being credited with solving two homicides here and two in Mexico, all the while getting an innocent person out of jail."

"I'm sure I'll have to go over everything, too, when I get a little better."

"Guess so, but I don't think there's any urgency now. Marybeth is going up to Humboldt with the paperwork and get Alice turned loose on the world. She’s going to stay at my place, and I’m sure she'll be here in a day or so."

Lauren laughed. "Oh, shit, we're in for it now."

"Yep. Hey, I've met your parents, your sister and her husband, and one of your brothers. Everybody's been coming and going, and we've been talking in the waiting room, and I had to tell them the full story, too, what happened and why and how and who Jenny was and Alice, and Shane and me. I tell you, I've got the story down pat. And they're all out-of-towners, too, so I'm also their local guide person and authority on where to go and where to eat in San Francisco, like that's a big mystery. We all went out to dinner on Fisherman's Wharf. They're great people, and they love you."

"Yes, they are. They haven't quite figured out what to think about my sexuality and orientation thing, but they're OK with it. Kind of like your family, I guess."

"Yeah, I guess we're hard for the straight world to figure out, although I could never figure out why. I mean, who doesn't like pussy, you know? I know I certainly do."

Lauren laughed. "We're hard to figure out with each other, sometimes."

"Sometimes."

"Like us."

"Like us."

"If there is an us. Is there an us?"

Carmen sighed. "To tell you the truth, I just don't know. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it. About us. About … maybe. Pretty sure you have, too."

"It's crossed my mind a couple of times. But police brass frown on cops sleeping with their partners, and you were kinda my unofficial, unbadged partner. Unprofessional. Marybeth would have had a cow."

"This is the first time we've ever talked about it, out in the open."

"Our timing is pretty lousy, though. Me shot up and hooked up to machinery for the foreseeable future. You still in love with Shane, who is hooked up to machinery also for the foreseeable future. You in San Francisco and going away to sea for big stretches of time. Me and Shane going back to LA, sooner or later."

"I'm not still in love with Shane."

"Oh, bullshit."

"It's … complicated."

"Right. Because if it wasn't complicated, you and me, we'd have been a thing by now."

"I know." Carmen hesitated. "This may be a really bad time to mention it, but somebody else stopped by. A woman named Caroline. Said she came up from LA when she heard the news."

"Yeah. Caroline. A blast from the past. One of those exes who become friends, sort of."

"Yeah, I know a few of those myself. At any rate, she was very concerned, almost in tears. And it was, like the second day, and we still didn't know if you were going to make it or not. She gave me her e-mail address and I've been keeping her updated."

"Good, thanks. I'll e-mail her myself, one of these days."

A nurse stuck her head in the door. "Time's up, Miss Morales. Lauren needs her meds and a wash-up."

"Yeah, I thought she was getting kinda stinky," Carmen said. The nurse laughed and left.

"Maybe one day you'll get a turn in my bathtub," Lauren said.

"I've been working on that fantasy myself," Carmen laughed. "Making you stinky, then cleaning you up. I think I better leave now, I have to go masturbate."

Lauren laughed. "Come back any time," she said, waving weakly. “Say hello to Mr. Hitachi for me.”

"Count on it," Carmen said at the door.


	33. Sprung

When one of the correctional officers escorted Alice to the office of Margaret Elder, the warden of Humboldt, she thought she was going to get yet another reprimand about in-your-face arguments with other inmates in the dining hall that had to be broken up by correctional officers before they got physical. There was one just yesterday at dinner. It was unfair, Alice told anyone who would listen, because she didn’t start the arguments, she just refused to be pushed around, bullied, or intimidated. Of course, no one wanted to hear it. Come on, it’s prison.

But when the guard held the door open and ushered her in, Alice was surprised to find Warden Elder standing by the window next to Marybeth Duffy, both of them looking out the window at the prison exercise yard. They turned when Alice came in. Alice paled when she saw the looks on their faces.

“What happened?” she asked quietly.

“Good news and bad news, Alice,” the warden said.

“Give me the bad first. Sergeant Duffy, sorry if I didn’t say hello.”

“No problem,” Marybeth said.

“Better sit down,” the warden said gently.

Alice sat in the chair facing the warden’s desk. The warden came and sat down; Marybeth stayed by the window. “So what is it?” Alice asked.

“Shane McCutcheon has been very badly hurt. She may not make it. The detective she was working with--”

“Lauren?” Alice whispered.

“Yes, Lauren Hancock. She was shot, but it looks like she’s going to make it.”

“Carmen?”

“Carmen is okay. She saved Lauren’s life. Shane saved both Lauren and Carmen, and maybe herself, too.”

A tear rolled down Alice’s face. “I can’t wait for the good news.”

“The man who killed Jenny and Max, and two other people you probably don’t even know about, has been identified and killed. Shane shot him, defending Lauren and Carmen. And you’re going home.”

“Home?” Alice sounded like she didn’t believe it.

“Marybeth brought me the paperwork, signed by the judge and co-signed by the DA. Your record is going to be expunged, which is probably the least of your concerns at the moment. As soon as you pack your stuff and we process you, you’re out of here.”

Alice said nothing. She was in shock. She looked at Marybeth, who smiled grimly and nodded her head. “When you leave here, you’re free to go anywhere you want. But I’d be very happy to drive you to San Francisco. I’ve got a lot to tell you, and I know you’ll have a thousand questions. Carmen said to tell you that you can stay at her place. But I’ll take you straight to the hospital, if you want. Carmen’s there now.”

“You said she’s okay.”

“She is. She’s keeping vigil over Shane and Lauren.”

“Can I see Shane?”

“You can look through the window. You may be able to go into her room in a few days. She’s in a coma.”

“Coma.” Alice said. She covered her eyes with her hands and cried for a few minutes. The warden poured a glass of water and sat it on the edge of her desk in front of Alice, along with a box of tissues. Marybeth looked out the window, her arms folded. Her cell phone dinged, and she opened it, glanced at the message, and typed in a brief reply. She put her cell phone back in its holster.

Alice composed her self, wiped her eyes with a tissue, took a sip of water.

“Who was it?” she asked. “Who killed Jenny?”

“Shane’s father,” Marybeth said. “Gabe McCutcheon. He had been blackmailing Jenny and that actress Niki Stevens for five months. Got a hundred grand from them. The night of the farewell party for Bette and Tina, Jenny had a confrontation with him while you guys were watching the video Jenny made. He got into an argument with her, followed her or maybe chased her up the back steps to the deck, grabbed her. She turned and slapped him. He grabbed her, she broke free but went through the tape and fell to the walkway around the pool. That’s what he said, anyway, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is she was unconscious, and he rolled her into the pool, where she drowned. So that’s what made it murder.”

“She never screamed or anything. None of us heard anything.”

“No. From what we can figure out and what we’ve learned, Jenny was keeping the blackmail quiet from all of you. She and Niki were the only two who knew about, with one exception.”

Alice looked at her, mystified.

“We’re just about certain Max was helping him. He was the inside person, feeding information to Gabe McCutcheon. And it gets worse. Max had great computer skills, and Gabe had no more skills than the average person. Max did a lot of the legwork getting the stuff Gabe used to blackmail Jenny. He built a fake porn web site Gabe used as part of the blackmail. Pay up or this goes on the web. Max also helped Gabe get a new identity, a new driver’s license, and somehow managed to get the photo of Gabe on his Oregon license changed. Gabe couldn’t have done any of that in a thousand years. Max could, and did.”

“Toward the end,” Alice said, “Max really hated Jenny. We all knew it, but Max didn’t make a big deal about it. I mean, they fought off and on for years, but it got serious at the end. And he needed money for his operation. And Jenny kept messing up his relationship with Tom.”

“Jenny kept messing with everybody’s relationship with everybody,” Marybeth said. “Bette and Tina--”

“Oh, Jesus, yes,” Alice murmured.”

“--Helena and Dylan. Shane and Mollie. I don’t know, did she mess with you and Tasha?”

“No. We fucked that one up all by ourselves, thank you. You talked to Tasha?”

“A couple times. Once right after Jenny’s murder. She heard the call-out on a police scanner, and came to Bette and Tina’s house. We didn’t let her anywhere near, of course, but she was there. I talked to her two days later, after you confessed.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, and I quote, ‘No fucking way. No fucking way. No fucking way.’ Three times. She probably would have said it a few more times, but I cut her off and asked her some questions.”

Alice nodded.

“Come on,” Marybeth said. “I want to get on the road. It’s a six-hour drive to San Francisco, seven if we stop for lunch and eight if we stop for dinner. You have to pack up your stuff.”

“That’ll take under two minutes,” Alice said.

“Anybody you need to say goodbye to?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Alice said.

“I’ll get you started processing out,” Warden Elder said.

“I don’t get it,” Alice said. “Why are you two giving me the VIP treatment?”

“Why?” the warden said. “I’ll tell you why. You know how many innocent people have walked out of here?”

* * *

“It’s almost noon,” Marybeth said as they drove away from Humboldt State Farm and Prison for Women. “My guess is you haven’t had a decent meal in a year. Your credit card is probably expired, so it’s my treat.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Alice asked. “Sorry for being blunt. But, you know, I’ve been in prison, and we tend to get suspicious whenever somebody does anything nice.”

“Because they are going to fuck you or shank you,” Marybeth said.

“Pretty much,” Alice said. “Sometime one after the other.”

Marybeth let a moment go by. “Was it bad in there?”

Alice thought about being smart-ass, but decided not to. “It was ... I don’t know. Sometimes terrifying. The thing was, you could never let your guard down. You were on maximum alert twenty-four seven three sixty-five. You could never just relax and chill, you know? You never knew who you could trust, who was okay, and who wasn’t. And it made no difference, guards or inmates. Some were okay, some were not. It took me a while, but I finally learned how to tell the difference.”

“How was that?”

“The ones who were dangerous were the ones who talked to you. Looked you in the eye. Showed some interest, even if it seemed to be okay. The ones you could trust were the ones who never looked at anybody, never wanted anything, hardly ever talked. They learned to shut down. When you became invisible, usually nobody fucked with you.”

“I’m guessing you had some difficulty becoming invisible.”

“You think?” Alice said. “Okay, sorry for being sarcastic.”

“Old habits die hard,” Marybeth said. “What do you want for lunch?”

“I would kill for a halfway decent giant, fat, juicy cheeseburger with crispy bacon and some decent steak fries,” Alice said. “Lettuce and tomato that isn’t four days old. A slice of onion that will contaminate your breath for two or three hours. And a beer. God, I’d love a beer.”

“Coming right up,” Marybeth said.

* * *

“Why are you being so good to me?” Alice asked, after she had ordered the house deluxe bacon cheeseburger and a Dos Equis.

Marybeth shrugged. “Like the warden said, it’s not often we get to spring an innocent person from jail. You’re my first.”

“I’ll be gentle,” Alice said. “I can’t remember the last time I had somebody’s cherry.”

The waiter brought Alice’s Dos Equis and Marybeth’s iced tea.

“Oh, God, that’s so good,” Alice said, taking a big swallow of beer. “This is all my fault. Everything. The murders. I fucked up your investigation. That’s all I’ve been thinking about. Even before Shane came up to see me.”

“Actually, I’ve been giving that a lot of thought, too,” Marybeth said. “I used to blame you, too. And yes, you did fuck up my investigation, big time. But you know what would have happened if you hadn’t?”

“You’d have arrested Shane.”

“Damn right. Everyone thought she did it. Even you, that’s why you falsely confessed. She had a ton of motive. She had opportunity, you guys wandering in and out of the video show. Could have happened the same way, too. She got into an argument with Jenny on the deck, somebody pushed somebody, somebody pushed back, Jenny goes flying off the deck, Shane walks down the steps, rolls her into the pool, goes into a kind of shock, blacks it all out, walks back into the media room, watches the rest of the goodbye video. She’d already found the negatives in her attic, along with the jacket with Mollie’s note. She had a ton of anger, which she buried, because that was how she dealt with things. So yes, if you hadn’t confessed I’d have arrested Shane in a heartbeat. But here’s what I’ve since learned. The person who fucked up my investigation wasn’t you, it was Niki Stevens. She’s the one who never told us she and Jenny were being blackmailed. I might have had Shane sitting in a holding cell in handcuffs, but if Niki had told us the truth, we’d have tracked all that down, and eventually we’d have let Shane go. I can’t tell you we’d have gotten to Gabe McCutcheon, but we’d have sooner or later let Shane go.”

“Okay,” Alice said, before she took a giant bite out of her terrific roadhouse bacon cheeseburger that had just arrived, “start at the beginning. Tell me everything that happened.”

It took Marybeth most of the drive to San Francisco.


	34. Happy Ending

On the sixth day they started removing bandages from Shane's head so she no longer looked like The Mummy. Dr. Hopkinson and three techs hooked her up to a maze of wires and sensors, and ran more series of tests. Then they took her down to the CAT scan room and took a couple hours worth of pictures and studies and views. About 4 p.m. Dr. Hopkinson came to the waiting room and sat down next to Carmen and Alice.

"Okay, here's what it looks like. We ran all the tests in the book, and so far we see no signs of any kind of damage, but because we can't see it doesn't mean there isn't some. Nothing is certain in this kind of thing. But that we don't see anything is a pretty good indicator. If we'd seen something, then that would probably be bad, but we've seen nothing, so that's good, but by no means definitive. Does that make sense?"

Carmen and Alice nodded. "But you still don't know how long she'll be in a coma, right?" Alice asked.

"That's right. Could be an hour, a day, a month, a year. I can't tell you. Most comas resolve in two to four weeks, but some can go on longer."

"How much longer?" Alice asked.

"Well, I don't want to scare you, but the record is 19 years. But like I said the other day, the chances seem to be in her favor, and the fact that it's been six days shouldn't discourage you. Keep talking to her. Hospital protocol is to always assume the patient can hear you. I'm convinced she's listening at some level, and it'll do you both good, too. Okay?"

* * *

"Hey, Shane, guess who? Yeah, me, Alice. Look, I gotta say this right off the bat, and I'll tell you later when you're awake, but I just gotta tell you now, too. I am sooooo sorry I ever got you into this, and I feel so bad about it all I hope you can forgive me. You and I have been almost besty friends ever since Harvey's funeral way back when we first met, and God knows, we've been through thick and thin together, what with me and Dana and, you know, me and Laura, and you and Cherie and you and Carmen and you and Paige, and you and Molly, and then all of us with Jenny, and me with Tasha. So, yeah, it's been a tough couple of years for all of us, you know? But no matter what, we're all gonna stick together, right to the bitter end, okay? So don't worry about that. We've all got another half a century to spend with each other.

"And hey, listen, I've got some red hot news for you! This afternoon I've got a job interview at KPSF. Yeah! I'm gonna see about bringing the Alice Pieszecki radio show to San Francisco. I’ve been interviewed by three or four TV stations since I got out, I’m practically a cable TV star, and somebody at KPSF saw one and called me up. The idea is it's gonna be an afternoon talk show, a couple hours maybe, but maybe not so self-absorbed as my last show, ya know? And the theme is I'm the new girl in town, and kind of a tourist in San Francisco and discovering everything about the region with new eyes, see? And there will be lots of interviews with all sorts of interesting people, gay, straight, bi, trannies, traffic cops, whatever. I mean, the rules are there are no rules. I'll talk about all the usual this and that, whatever crosses my mind. I'll talk about my time in prison, the Bitches in the Big House, Women Behind Bars, wow, what could be hotter than that? Going to prison could be the best career move I ever made! Who would have thought, huh? And I'll talk about Jenny's murder and everything that happened, but there will be lots more that has nothing to do with that. And I'm gonna ask them if I can go on locations and do shows from places around town and the region, like do a show from a vineyard up in Sonoma or Napa, and interview grape pickers and wine makers. All those massive, scary forest fires. And go to the Castro and interview drag queens and all kinds of gays and lezzies. Oh, it'll be cool! I hope they go for it. So I'll let you know soon as I hear anything definite after my interview. 'Kay? And if I get the job, I'm gonna move up here to San Francisco. LA's been a great ride for me, but maybe it's time to find new pastures, ya know? Bette and Tina did, and Carmen did, and now maybe me, too. You ought to think about moving here, too. God knows, you've fucked every lesbian in LA by now, and half the lezzie wannabes and maybes and might-bes. That talent pool's gotta be shrinking for you, yanno? I mean, look, there's a whole great big city, a whole region, chock full of new pussy that's never had the Shane McCutcheon experience. It'll take you five years just to fuck your way through the Castro, never mind the rest of the town.

"You need anything? I can go get you a latte, you know, or whatever you want, if you'll just wake up and drink it. It's been nine days, see, and to tell you the truth, I'm getting a little worried, honey. Yeah. And Carmen. She tries not to show it when she comes and talks to you, she wants to be all bright and cheery, you know how upbeat Carmen is. But seriously, she's worried sick. She tries real hard not to show it, but you know she's still in love with you. Yeah, I know, crazy, huh? She won’t talk about it, and she’ll never say it out loud, but you know me, I know these things. And you, you always did know people's minds even before they did, so I know you know it, too. I don't know if when she talks to you she's ever told you she still loves you, but I know she does. Yeah. So you need to wake up and have a good long heart-to-heart talk with her. Although you've never had a heart-to-heart talk with anybody ever in your life, so I guess it's a figure of speech. But you know what I mean. If you ever learn how to get in touch with yourself and express your emotions, she'd be a good one for you to start off with, ya know? And hey, I can say this 'cause I'm your best friend, but seriously, sweetheart, fucking up your relationship with Carmen was far and away the biggest fuck-up of your life, and we both know you've had some train wrecks, right? Your married Malibu Milf, and Fire Girl, and Mollie, and god knows, Jenny. But Carmen and you, that one was a 27-car Sunset Express going-off-the-rails and falling-off-the-trestle-into-the-gorge-below train wreck. Maybe you can make it right, I don't know. But if ever something was worth a shot, that was it. And, uh, I’m hesitant to mention it, but I think she’s got this thing for Lauren Hancock, too. She’s pretty torn between the two of you, so you’ve got to wake the fuck up and get your ass back in the game, you know? Because, babe, you could lose her again, and this time I think maybe permanently and forever. And hey, I heard something about you and Lauren back in the day. Is that true? Did you and she ever hook up way back when? If so, you never told me, and I’ll have to put it up on the chart. And while I’m confessing my sins, I might as well confess one reason I want you and Carmen to get back together is because I’m thinking maybe I’d take a shot at Lauren. I never fucked a cop, and Tasha only became a cop after she and I broke up. So fuzz-fucking is still on my bucket list, and who knows, maybe Lauren and me … well, let’s not talk about it now. "

"'Kay, babe, I gotta run. I've got to go back to Carmen's house and shower and change and get ready for my job interview. Carmen will be here in a few minutes. Love ya, see ya later."

* * *

"Good afternoon, sunshine," Carmen said. "Guess what? You have two surprise visitors. Mystery guests, would you please sign in?"

"Chane? Guess who thees ees? Me, Mercedes, Carmen's mom! And guess who is with me?"

"Hi, Shane, it's me, Patricia. How are you? We've been so worried about you. Carmen's told us everything that's happened, and how you saved her life, and everything. So you hurry up, and get better, okay?"

"That's right, Chane. You been sleeping a long time, now it's time for you to get up. Carmen, could you take your sister and go get a soda or something? I want to talk to Chane."

"Uh, Mom, I'm not--" Carmen protested.

"Uh, can she really--" Patricia tried to ask.

"I want to talk to Chane alone! We came all the way from Los Angeles, I want to talk to her. I have things to say. So if you don't want a soda drink, go to the gift shop or something."

"Uh, okay, right, whatever you say, Mom. Car, let's go get a cup of coffee."

"Thank you. Enjoy. Take your time. I have muy mucho on my mind."

"Oh, sweet Jesus," Carmen murmured as Patricia led her from Shane's room, grateful for once that Shane was still unconscious. She knew Shane was about to get an earful.

"Well, Chane, now we are alone. Let me sit down here. There. Okay, first I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for saving Carmen's life. You know she means the world to me, she has always been my angel, my baby. I don't think I could stand to ever lose her, it would kill me, I think, if anything ever happened to her.

"But next, I want to tell you how angry I was at your wedding when you left her standing at the altar. She was so hurt and so humiliated, and I swore I would strangle you if I ever got my hands on you. Now I know all about your father stealing that money from that rich woman, but that's still no reason to do what you did. You should have come to us and explained everything, and we would still have had the wedding.

"And I have something on my conscience I need to explain to you. When I learned that Carmen was _lesbiana_ , I said some awful things, and it estranged me from her for many months. It was my fault. I know now how I had overlooked many things over the years, things that should have been plain as day to a mother. But I am very old school and traditional, you know, and it took me a long time to understand things. And the other thing I wanted to say to you is that I want you to know when Carmen first brought you home as her friend, how much we all liked you, more than liked you, we loved you. That's what I wanted to tell you, that I loved you as a daughter and as my daughter's friend, and how much I enjoyed having you visit and be her friend. And then when she told me you were ... you know, what do you call, partners? Anyway, I was very upset. But when that rich woman called Patricia and told us you were getting married in Canada, I just started weeping. My Carmen, getting married! I had wanted to go to my Carmen's wedding for so long, Chane! I wanted her to be happy and to have the most beautiful wedding, and to walk down the aisle in the most beautiful dress! And when I realized that my Carmen was going to be married without me there, I was heartbroken like you couldn't believe, Chane! And then in the same breath this woman tells us she's going to arrange for us to go to the wedding, Chane, I cried! Yes! I cried. I was so happy, Chane! And that she was going to marry you! Well, I had gotten used to the idea that Carmen was _lesbiana_. You have no idea, the arguments we had in the house, Patricia and Anna telling me that they'd known for years about Carmen, and that I was being blind. And that there was nothing wrong with being _lesbiana_. And I came to see she was right. My Patricia and Anna, two very smart girls, and so is my Carmen. And you know what, Chane? I knew right away, if my Carmen was going to marry a woman, Chane, I was so happy it would be you. You were already a part of our family, because I loved you, and Abuela loved you, and Patricia and Anna, they loved you. You fit right in so well! And so when you did that very bad thing that night, and ran away, and left my Carmen there, I was so angry, Chane, but also I was so heartbroken, too, not only because my Carmen was heartbroken, but also because we had all lost you, too, and forever.

"Someday, not today, but someday, maybe I tell you what happened to Carmen right after. How she cried and cried. For weeks she was devastated. She stayed in her room, she didn't do any DJ things she did. She hardly ate, I had to stuff the food into her to keep her alive, she was losing so much weight. Oh, it was so sad. She cried, and I cried for her, too. I did. That's what I have to tell you. How I come to find forgiveness for you, and to tell you ... to tell you ... well, I don't know. Carmen says she will never get back with you that way ever again, but I don't know. Maybe what I want to tell you is it would be okay with me if you two did get back together. I know in her heart she still loves you, even though she says no. And I think maybe you still love her, too. So what I am saying is, if you still want to marry her, and join our family, well, there will always be a place for you. Oh, my. Now I am making myself cry again. Okay, Chane, I'll let you go back to sleep now, although I wish you to hurry and wake up. I've said what I have to say. We love you, Chane. That's all. We love you. Please, get well and wake up, and make my daughter happy."

* * *

"Hey, Shane, me again," Carmen said. "How’d it go with my mom? Never mind, I think I don’t want to know. You’re still plugged into the machine and it’s working, you’re still beeping and making sine waves, so means she didn’t cut your power cord. I guess we should have made her go through a metal detector before we let her into your room, but I didn’t think of it in time. Anyway, there’s something else I wanted to tell you about. I got a call from Marybeth this morning, and we’ve got some good news. They were finally able to locate Shay. He’s living in some sort of commune in some small town in Colorado, and guess what? He’s the assistant manager of a pot store. How cool is that? That’s almost as useful as having a close family member who’s a doctor or a lawyer, you know? Anyway, Marybeth was able to talk to him on the phone and tell him what had happened. She says he took it pretty well. She said he was upset his father was dead, and even more upset you were the one who shot him. But Marybeth explained the circumstances, that Gabe had killed Jenny and Max and two other people, had shot Lauren, was going to kill me and tried to kill you, and you saved my life, so, you know, he understood. Marybeth said when she got done telling him everything, he said something like, well, he knew his father had done some pretty bad stuff in his life, so he shouldn’t be too surprised. Marybeth gave me his contact information, and he said after you wake up he’ll take some time off and come visit you. I asked if he could bring us some store samples or factory seconds, and he just laughed. But he didn’t say no, either."

* * *

"Hi, Shane. My name's Daphne, you can call me Daph, and after we get to know each other better, I might even let you call me Daffy, like my friends do. I just came on duty, so I'm gonna be your nurse for the next twelve hours, until the morning shift comes in. I've just read through your chart, and everything is still looking very good, so you can go ahead and wake up any time you want to. In case you're wondering, it's Day 11. It was warm and sunny all day, but late this afternoon some clouds started building up, and they're calling for rain tonight. They tell me you have a partner named Carmen, who is off getting some dinner, and she'll be back shortly. So in the meantime I'm going to take this opportunity to give you a sponge bath, clean you up a bit, and I think you'll feel a lot better afterward, you know? And I'm going to roll you around this way and that, too, to change the bedding and see that you get a little exercise and movement, and I want to check you for bed sores. I've got some lotion for you for that, so you're gonna smell real good, too, in a few minutes. I saw your friend Carmen, you know. She's really pretty, you're so lucky. I don't swing that way, myself, but if I did, wow, that Carmen would do it for me, you know? I see why you're all hot for her. So I'm gonna start giving you that bath now, okay? The water's not too hot. Let's get this gown off of you. Good. Left arm first, okay? Here we go."

* * *

Carmen knocked on the door jamb just as one of the nurses was leaving Lauren's room. "Hey, Carmen," the nurse said.

"Hey, Bev, how's our patient today?"

"She's doing real good. Sitting up, eating soft food. We pulled a couple tubes out of her, hosed her down, changed her gown—"

"But it still opens in the back, right?" Carmen asked. "So everybody can see that great ass?"

"Oh, bet your bippy, Carmen. It'd be a real shame to cover that tushy up."

"I can hear you, you know," Lauren said from the bed. "I'm still alive, you know."

"See?" Bev said. "Feisty." She turned to Lauren. "I'll be back in a little while with some delicious pills."

"Oh, goody," Lauren said. Bev laughed and left.

"Well, you've perked up in the last 24 hours," Carmen said, sitting in a chair by the bed.

"Only from the neck up. I still feel like shit, got no strength. It's all I can do to turn the TV on and off. And I have to do everything left-handed."

"They say it takes a while. Good thing I didn’t bring my Hitachi."

"Maybe next week," Lauren said. "I've been thinking.”

"The doctor say that was okay?"

"Fuck you," Lauren said, smiling. "Yes. Thinking is about the only thing I'm allowed to do, besides pee into a bag. They're pretty kinky here. Everybody likes it when I pee and the bag fills up. They get all excited and happy. They measure it and write it down on my chart. Pissed 130 milliliters."

"Different strokes, different folks. I'm not opposed to water sports. So what have you been thinking?"

"That being a cop is a shitty job."

"That a fact? I’ve heard rumors."

"Yep. It's true. Even being a hot lezzie police detective. It's way over-rated."

"Well, yeah, if you keep getting shot all the time. Didn’t they talk about this in cop school?”

“It’s called the police academy.”

“That’d make a good name for a movie,” Carmen said. “Trust me about this. I have a good instinct for movie titles.”

“Uh huh.”

“I've been thinking about a career change, too," Carmen said, suddenly dropped to a shooter's crouch, her gun hand extended, index finger out and her left hand cupping the bottom of the grip of the imaginary gun. "Freeze, biodegradable algae container!"

"What happened to scumbag?" "Lauren asked. "I'm pretty sure they told us always say 'scumbag.'"

"I know, but that's disgusting. A condom full of man jism. Ewwwwwwwwww. This is California. I'd want to be a new type of ecologically sensitive, smokin' hot dyke detective who doesn't denigrate suspects with icky names."

"I'm sure it's just what San Franciscans have been crying out for," Lauren said. "Fuck foul-mouthed Dirty Harry. Somewhere Clint Eastwood is puking into his hat." She closed her eyes, and Carmen thought maybe she'd gone to sleep. "Car," Lauren said, her voice very low and serious. "I'm not going back."

"To being a cop? I wondered what you'd decide. I'm surprised you thought about it this soon, though."

"Yeah, well, I've had a lot of free time in the last couple days."

"Guess so." Carmen said. "If you did go back, you'd be a hero, you know. Decorated policewoman, shot in the line of duty, awarded a medal for valor. Promotion to Detective Grade Double Oh Seven or whatever it is. The Golden Girl of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Police Chief-in-waiting."

"Fuck that. Hardly a week went by when Marybeth wasn't bitching about management and telling me to stay out on the street. No way I'm going to go that route."

"You're serious about this, aren't you?"

"I am," Lauren said quietly, closing her eyes. "Serious as a gunshot. And anyway, they tell me I'll have a lot of rehab to do. They say my arm will be okay, and probably my hand. I have to do strength exercises. I'd have to re-qualify all my weapons training. Spend time with a shrink so they can make sure I'm not PTSD or anything. Having to prove to everybody I won't fold or run or crack up."

"Well, anybody who thinks that doesn't know you."

"Yeah, but cops have a sixth sense about fellow cops who seem to be unreliable. Anyway, they'd probably make me a training officer, give me some totally green rookie to show the ropes to."

"Hey, that could be me! You could be my training officer."

"Right. Think we'd get much police work done? Besides, there's the question of who would be showing which ropes to who."

"Good point. Instead of ropes we could just use some tasteful bindings, maybe a scarf or a necktie. Or handcuffs, if you're into that sort of thing. You can order fur-lined cuffs from Amazon Prime."

Lauren smiled. "The point is, I'd have to do one hell of a lot of work just to get back to where I was the day this thing started. Just to get back to square one. And you know what? I already worked my ass off twice as hard as any male cop ever did just to get this far. Every female cop does. Ask Marybeth. And here's the thing. I just don't want to do the whole thing all over again. I don’t want to work twice as hard, twice."

"Okay, I get that. Twice as hard, twice. That would make it four play. And not the good kind."

"Does everything I say have a sexual connotation to you?”

“Probably. But I’m sorry, I distracted you. You were saying?”

“I said I've been thinking. You know those cruise ships you work on?"

"I do. Intimately. Figure of speech."

"They must have security people on them, right? People who check tickets and passports and make sure nobody gets too drunk in the Calypso lounge at three in the morning? Probably other stuff, too."

"They do have security people," Carmen said. It wasn’t a good idea to mention she'd fucked one once, a cute Hungarian girl in a cabana on a beach on Maui during an evening ashore when they didn't have to get back to the ship until midnight.

"I was wondering if you knew anybody in personnel, had any contacts. If they'd be interested in hiring a highly decorated ex-lady cop with chest full of medals and bullets and stuff."

Carmen was laughing. "Yeah, I think I can figure out somebody who'd hire your sorry, bullet-ridden ass for some cushy job searching baggage for marijuana. If that's how you want to spend the rest of your declining years before retirement and a nursing home. Hell, I might even be able to write a letter of recommendation, that is, if the price is right."

"Are you soliciting a bribe from a badged officer of the law? I could have you arrested, you know."

"Oh, bullshit. All you want to do is put me in those fur-lined handcuffs. But not to take me to jail."

Lauren sighed, her eyes closed. "On that note, I think I'll take a nap, dreaming of you cuffed to my bed while I interrogate you without your lawyer present."

"You're not going to Mirandize me?"

"Don't you worry your pretty little ass about Miranda. She can just wait her turn."

Carmen laughed, but got up quietly. She could see Lauren really was tired and may even have truly fallen asleep. "I'll be back after dinner," Carmen said, but there was no reply. She walked toward the door.

“Car?”

Carmen turned. “I thought you fell asleep.”

“Car? That night in Bakersfield,” Lauren said quietly.

“Uh-huh,” Carmen said.

“That night. I thought I heard a knock on my door. It was a really quiet knock, and I wasn’t even sure I heard it. I was naked, I even had one foot in the shower stall. I felt, you know, grungy and dirty, and I needed a shower. I had just got off the phone from Marybeth, reporting in, and I was pretty tired and stinky. It was a really long, long day, you know. So I’m naked and got one foot in the shower. I have I mentioned I was feeling kinda stinky and dirty and needed a shower?”

“It came up,” Carmen said.

“I just told you I wasn’t sure I heard the knock. But that was a lie. I heard it. But you know…” Lauren’s voice trailed off.

“You were all stinky and needed a shower. Exhausted. Too pooped to pop.”

“Yes.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t. I go back into the bedroom and I find a robe, and I put it on, and I go to the door, and I open the door. But see, it took a while, thinking about it and putting my robe on.”

“And you didn’t want to open the door being all stinky and naked.”

“No.”

“I see.”

“No, you still don’t.”

“This is getting complicated.”

“You have no idea. See, when I went to the door, there was nobody there. So I sit down on the bed for a minute, and think about what to do.”

“I see.”

“So I decide, shit, I’m still all stinky and need a shower. So I go take my shower, and I put my robe back on. And I get my room key and put it in my pocket--"

“Because you don’t want to be locked out of your room.”

“Right. And then I go down the hall, all clean and smelling pretty good, and I knock on a hotel room door.”

“I see.”

“There was no answer,” Lauren said. “So I went back to my room and went to bed.”

“I see,” Carmen said again. “And you wondered why nobody answered the door.”

“I gave it some thought, yes.”

There was a long silence. And then Carmen said, “I never heard the knock.”

“Oh.”

“I was in the shower,” Carmen said. “I was all stinky and needed a shower. It was a really long day. I needed a shower. The shower stall had a nice shower wand.”

There was another long silence while they both thought about it.

Finally Carmen broke the spell. “Get some rest,” she said. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Okay, see ya,” Lauren said. “Enjoy your shower.”

Carmen laughed.

* * *

"Goooooood morninnnnnngggggggggggg, San. Fran. Ciscoooooooooo!!! Okay, it's not morning, it's 2 in the afternoon, but I know some of you slackers are just now hauling your sorry butts out of bed. This is Station KPSF and I'm Alice ‘Prisoner No. 92530’ Pieszecki, coming to you live from my new studio here in the Tower of Broadcast Power. Yep, I'm your brand new talk show host here in the 2 to 4 p.m. afternoon time slot on KPSF, and this is my very first show, and I gotta tell ya, San Francisco, I am sooooooooo freaking jazzed! I'm gonna have a terrific time and I hope you will too. And here's the rules and the format for the show: There aren't any rules, and there isn't any format. Well, there is and there isn't, ya know? A lot of the time, I'm gonna talk, but I'm gonna have lots and lots of guests on the show, and I'm gonna interview them and we're gonna talk about everything under the sun. And the good folks here at KPSF are gonna let me do my thing, which includes going out to lots of locations all around this city and the surrounding countryside, Oakland, Napa, San Jose, Sausalito, hell, I don't know. We might do a show from Big Sur or from my most recent alma mater, Humboldt State Farm and Prison for Women. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am THAT Alice Pieszecki, the Mad Lesbian Murderess Who Drowned Poor Jenny Schecter in Hollywood, only of course as you all know by now, I didn't do it. I gotta tell ya, though, I’m about the last person in California you’d think of as ‘innocent,’ if ya know what I mean, and I’m pegging about 9 point 8 on the giant Irony Meter on the wall, but as far as murder goes, I am a spring lamb, and unless you've been under a rock for the last month or two, you all know all about it, and yes, we're gonna talk about it. Bitches Behind Bars! Lesbos in Lockdown! Or maybe it’s Lesbos in Lockup. Lockup or Lockdown? Who knows. Dykes in Dungeons, how’s that? Anyway, we're gonna talk about my old much beloved girlfriend, Dana Fairbanks -- Hi, Dana!! -- who died a few years ago of breast cancer, so you just KNOW we're gonna talk about breast cancer and cancer research and lots of women's health issues, because I am just ALL OVER that stuff, my sisters. And here's one of the other major themes of this show, which is, I'm the new girl in town, so we're gonna explore this city and this region with a newcomer's eyes, and I'm gonna talk to a lot of people and get to learn about it right here from 2 to 4 every weekday afternoon, and you're all gonna help me do it. And before we start today's show, I have to do two call-outs, first to my great, great friend Shane McCutcheon, who as you all know has been in a coma for the last thirteen days at San Francisco General Hospital, so I want all of you to give her your best wishes and best thoughts, and if you're religious, then give her your prayers as well, because even if Shane doesn't believe in that stuff, you might, and anyway, no harm done. Okay! And now my other call-out is to my other great, great friend Carmen de la Pica Morales, the all-time smokin'est DJ in LA _and_ San Francisco history. You might know her as DJ La Pica, the Spicy One. And as you all know by now, it was my friends Shane and Carmen who got me out of jail for a crime I didn't commit, and who tracked down the real killer, which you've all read about, and that's how Shane wound up on death's door, and in a coma right now. Yeah, I'm tearing up a little bit, so give me a second. 'Kay, I'm good, I'm good. Okay! Let's go! Today's first guest is probably someone you've never heard of but I think she's got a really interesting story to tell. So without further ado let me introduce Margaret Elder, the warden of Humboldt Prison, better knows as 'The Farm.' Warden, say hi to our audience."

"Good afternoon, San Francisco. Alice, I'm really happy to be here. And let me say, it's so great to see you in something other than an orange jumpsuit, and not banging your tin cup on the bars of your cell. And while I’m at it, can we negotiate that title, Dykes in Dungeons? I have trouble thinking of myself as The Dungeon Mistress."

"Hey! The warden's got a sense of humor! That was a little penitentiary humor, folks. But say, Warden, do you really like this outfit?"

"It's wonderful on you, Alice, really."

"Gee, thanks. Folks, I'm wearing a kind of a dark brown silk blouse with peasant sleeves..."

* * *

"Hi, Shane. It's me, Helena. I've been so worried about you. I was in Europe when Mummy sent me an e-mail saying you'd been hurt, but she didn't have too many details, other than what was in the LA papers. I read about you in the San Francisco papers on their Web sites, but they didn't have too many details, either. I only got back yesterday, and last night I talked to both Carmen and Alice, and for the first time I learned that a lot of this started because you wanted to get back the $10,000 your father swindled from me, and that you felt so bad about it. That was very sweet of you, but I just feel so guilty because it was all my fault in the first place for being so stupid, and I would _never_ want you to get hurt trying to get my money back. But I love you forever for being so sweet about it. I had no idea it bothered you so much all these years. And I see you and Carmen are at least talking to each other, and that's very good. I don't know what your relationship is, but I really hope it works out for both of you. She was _such_ a beautiful bride. You never got to see her in her dress. I was so jealous! Why, I might even have stolen her right away from you myself, she looked so delicious. But I promise, I'll keep my hands off. Well, I bet you've got a thousand questions, so let me fill you in about what I've been up to ... .”

* * *

“And we’re back from commercial here at Station KPSF, gang, and joining me now for the second hour of the Alice Pieszecki Show is my very, very special guest, a great gal who’s been one of my best friends for what? about six or seven years now. You all know her, because she’s been in the news and she’s one of the three great women who helped get me out of jail and find Jenny Schecter’s real killer, let’s hear it, San Francisco, for the gal you know as the Spicy One, DJ La Pica, give it up for Carmen ... de … la … Pica … MORALES!!! Yay!!!”

Alice whistled and stomped and made cheering noises while the technicians in the control booth opened their mics so they could cheer and shout in the background, a gimmick Alice often used. Meanwhile, Carmen, sitting nearby, had on her earphones and laughed during the intro.

“Hey, thanks, Alice,” she said into the mic that hung down in front of her. “Hey, San Francisco! It’s really great to be here.”

“So let’s tell everybody a little bit about you, Carmen. You’ve lived here in San Francisco for about four years now…”

“That’s right, I moved up here from LA, where I was born and raised, in the barrio, and I gotta say, I just love it up here. This is such a wonderful and exciting city, and not just the city but all the surrounding area, too, Oakland and Sausalito and the wine country up north, and down the peninsula, just so beautiful—“

“Oh, I know! I just never get tired of looking at it,” Alice said. “So what part of town do you live in?”

“I live in North Beach.”

“Oh, God, I just love North Beach--”

“Me, too. I’m, like, seven blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf, and three or four blocks from the Embarcadero, a few blocks from Telegraph Hill, and maybe eight blocks from City Lights Bookstore, which is like a holy shrine to me.”

“I just love City Lights. Now, about your career. You’re an incredible multitasker, you have two jobs—“

“Yes, by day I work for a major travel agency and sometimes as a cruise director on specialty cruises and even some regular cruises. Can I say the name on the air?”

“No, better not, I don’t want us to be accused of giving out free plugs.”

“Okay, when this interview is over today Olivia one of my business cards.”

“Aaaaaghh!” Alice laughed, “Oh, Carmen, that was SUCH a horrible pun, but a really excellent, sneaky plug, and yes, ladies and gentlemen of the listening audience, I knew it was coming because Carmen has only used that line a hundred or so times,” and in the background you could hear Carmen laughing, and one of the control room guys hoot-hooted.

“And of course by nights and weekends I’m a DJ, I do weddings, bar mitzvahs, wine-tastings, gay marriages, straight marriages, divorces, christenings, clubs, 49ers tailgating gigs, senior citizens events, you name it. The only thing I’ve never DJed yet is a gay Native American bris, but I’m looking forward to it.”

“And yet another shameless plug,” Alice said. “I’m such a fool for a pretty face. Okay, folks, DJ La Pica is bringing us this week’s list of Top Ten Lesbian Country and Western Tunes. What’s Number Ten this week, Car?”

“Alice, Number Ten this week is the new one by Becky Short and the Stanton Sisters, and it’s called _I Left My Strap-On in My Other Saddlebag_.’”

“Oh, I hate when that happens,” Alice said. “I don’t think I’ve heard that one yet. What’s Number Nine?”

“Number Nine this week was last week's Number Seven, so it has slipped a bit, but we got to remember it's been on the charts for six or eight weeks now. It's Mattie Maria Taylor's _It's Me You're Lubin' Up, But It's Her Buns You're Thinkin' 'bout.”_

“Oh, I luuuuuuuuuuuv that song,” Alice cried out. “I can really get behind that one!”

“Alice, behave yourself,” Carmen said, mock-sternly. “We have to discuss Number Eight. It's new on the charts this week, and it has already raised quite a ruckus. Both the Oklahoma and Kansas legislatures have proposed bills in the works to ban it. Yes, I'm talking about Bobbi Lu Perkins' _I Used to Love Momma and Jesus_.”

“I've read about that! The title doesn't sound bad, though.”

“It isn't, Alice,” Carmen. “It's the next couple lines. Come on, let's sing it for our listeners so they know what we're talking about.”

“All right! Ready? One, and two and--”

And in unison Carmen and Alice sang harmony into their microphones the first verse:

> _I used to love Momma and Jesus,_
> 
> _And all of those home-cooked meals._
> 
> _Now I love sushi and pussy and one special pole dancer_
> 
> _Who only wears six-inch high heels._

“Bobbi Lu sure has 'em worked up in America's heartland,” Alice said.

“I know! Isn't it great? Okay, Number Seven, _I’m Gonna Break Me in That Wild Mare_ , by Madison Catherwood.”

“Oh, a song about horses,” Alice said, playing dumb, even though she had co-written this skit with Carmen. "What 14-year-old tomboi doesn't love horses?"

“Uh, well, I guess that's one possible interpretation,” Carmen laughed.

“You mean it's not about horses?”

“You'll have to ask Madison that one.”

“I just think it's so sweet she compares the bliss that is Sapphic romance with having dom sex with a palomino,” Alice said.

“Number Six,” Carmen went right on, “is the one that always gets me weepy. _When I Seen Your U-Haul Leavin’ I Broke Down and Cried_ , by Sissy Jo Pinkley.”

“We've all been there one time or another, haven't we, girls? I know I've rented a box truck a time or two.”

“As indeed, who hasn't?” Carmen said. “Number Five, _Swappin' Spit_ by Bodie Lee Flutes. And speaking of bodily fluids, Alice, can you guess what's Number Four this week?”

“You bet I can, Carmen. Is it _You're Getting Me Chapped in All the Wrong Places_ by the Pink Buckaroos?”

“You nailed that one, Alice, like a Castro Street florist with a bouquet of Gerber daisies. Number Three, and I know you love this one 'cause I heard you humming it the other day. It's _Fess Up, Lurlene (Who Bit That Hickey on Your Ass?)_ by Lurlene Drinkwater and Tammy Jane Parnell.”

“Oh, I am sooo guilty, Carmen,” Alice said. “I croon that lament in the shower to get the vibrato. This is so fun, who's Number Two this week? I can't wait!”

“Alice, fasten your seat belt and put your tray table in the full upright and locked position, we're getting ready to set this bucket down. Number Two this week is about a Home on the Range domestic goddess, and it's called _That Chuckwagon Dyke Has Me Scrubbing Her Pots and Her Pans_ , performed by the Daughters of Bilitis Memorial Glee Club. And now, this week's Number One on the Lesbian Country and Western Top Ten--”

“Control room, can I have a drum roll, please?” Alice asked, and in the control room the engineers made a ruckus trying to sound like a drum roll.

“It's none other than Jonni-Jo Mack’s anthem of girl-on-girl carpet-munching self-esteem, _Keep Your Purty Little Head Up When You're Going Down on Me_!”

“Yaaayyy!” Alice whooped it up, joined by the boys in the control room, who hooted and hollered and clapped on cue. When order was restored, Alice continued, “I just love it when a song has an inspiring, affirmative message. Well, there you have it, San Francisco, this week's C and W Top Ten of the sagebrush love that dare not yodel its name. Thanks a bunch to my great friend, the incredible DJ La Pica! And we'll see you back here again next week, right?”

“You got it, Alice. But before I go, can we do that special call-out we talked about?”

“Sure can, babe. Ready? One, two, three--” and together Alice and Carmen shouted into their microphones, “Hey, Shane! We love you! Now get your ass out of bed!”

* * *

Carmen sat in the big, slightly oversize chair hospitals have for patients. It was a dull orange color and some sort of synthetic, plastic-covered, and clunky, and difficult to move even though it was on casters. Carmen had gone out and bought a large flannel sheet, in a tartan plaid, and two feet of elastic tape, and in twenty minutes had made an impromptu slip cover for it, She was sitting back in the chair now, and had maneuvered the side lever so the leg platform came up, and her lower legs were parallel to the floor. She had pulled over the big, rolling, C-shaped table hospitals use to position across beds so patients can sit up and eat, so that it sat parallel to her chair. She had brought in a floor lamp and it was plugged in behind her, its light shining over her should onto the magazine she was reading. With the overhead rooms lights turned off it provided a small, directed cone of light so someone could sit in the chair and still read without disturbing anyone else in the room or on the floor.

On her side table she had brought in a dishtowel to use as a makeshift tablecloth, and it helped absorb condensation on the outside of whatever cold drink was there. There was a small basket in which there was the store of candies, packs of crackers, protein power bars, gum, Tic-Tacs, ballpoint pen, pad of Post-It notes, and whatever else what she thought of as "the duty reader" might need. There was a box of tissues the hospital put into every patient's room, as though Shane might suddenly sneeze or need to blow her nose. Nearly every horizontal surface of the room, and much of the limited wall space, was occupied by get-well cards, pots of flowers real and synthetic, and a small army of assorted stuffed animals. Carmen thought of the room as her "nest," readily acknowledging she was a nest-builder extraordinaire, never mind that its central object was a hospital bed with a comatose patient swaddled in bandages, monitored by beeping, flashing and tweeting machines and monitors, most of which did things automatically at regular intervals.

It was Day 14 of what Carmen and Alice had come to call "The Vigil." Two weeks since Shane had been wheeled into the operating room well after midnight with the left side of her skull crushed in. Nine days after Shane was brought out of her medically induced coma, nine days of "regular" coma, whatever that was.

* * *

When Lauren was well enough to have all her tubes removed, IVs withdrawn, drains detached, monitor wiring unclipped and be moved to a wheelchair, she was transferred to a rehab facility for the remainder of her recovery. They made a major event out of it. Marybeth and the Sheriff came up from Los Angeles, the San Francisco police chief and mayor were there, her family arrived, and the doctors, nurses and techs who kept her alive managed a few minutes away from their duties. Two television stations sent news crews with lights and cameras, the whole gang gathered in the lobby waiting for Lauren to be wheeled out of the elevator and across the hospital lobby to her waiting transportation. Carmen waited patiently in a corner, sipping her morning coffee and trying to stay out of the way of the news crews and reporters as well as the law enforcement and city big shots.

Out on the sidewalk, Alice and her broadcast crew were on the air live, talking about Lauren's pending release. She had already managed to snag a short interview with the ER doctor who had worked on Lauren from the moment she was unloaded from the chopper.

Finally the moment arrived. The elevator door opened and there was Lauren in her wheelchair, dressed in an attractive navy blue bathrobe, her right arm still in a sling, but with a smaller cast. Someone had pinned her medal of valor and her badge to her bathrobe. They had wanted her to wear her dress uniform LASD hat, but Lauren had said no, enough was enough, and she knew she didn't look good in it anyway. Bev was pushing the wheelchair, in accordance with hospital policy, although Lauren was surrounded by her family. At first she was blinded by the TV lights and put her good arm up to shield the lights, squinting and modestly waving a tiny hello toward the cameras as the TV reporters tossed her questions and poked microphones in her face to record her quiet answers. Yes, I feel fine, no, it doesn't hurt, yes, everybody was great, yes I'm happy to be leaving, no offense, all the doctors and nurses were great, no, she didn't want to talk about the case and the shooting of Gabe McCutcheon, yes, she knew Alice had been released, and finally, she said they should all spend a moment thinking about poor Jenny Schecter, Max Sweeney, Henry Hooker and Diego Ramirez Llosa, and especially pray for Shane McCutcheon. Thank you, thank you.

And then Bev wheeled her across the lobby toward the double doors being held open by Marybeth and the mayor of San Francisco. Just as she got to the doors, Lauren saw Carmen far back in a corner behind the TV crews, watching silently. Lauren raised her left hand to stop Bev for a moment and her face broke out in a broad grin. She held her hand up to her ear, little finger and index finger extended in the symbol for a telephone and silently mouthed the words "Call me."

Carmen grinned, winked and slowly, sensuously licked her upper lip in a way that made Lauren laugh. Fortunately it all happened in an instant, and no one else saw it

* * *

“Last time you were here we reported on the Top Ten Lesbian Country and Western Songs,” Alice said into the studio microphone at Station KPSF. “What have you got for us this week, Carmen?”

“Well, Alice, all those great love songs got me thinking about the greatest love song of all time–”

“ _Cackling Rosie_?” Alice asked.

“ _Crackling_ , Alice, it’s _Crackling_. But you were sooo close! No, the greatest love song of all time was written by a woman who had her heart broken by many tragic love affairs–”

“Elizabeth Taylor wrote a song?”

“Nooo, but once again you were so, so close. No, the greatest love song of all time just has to be French, and was written by the late great Edith Piaf. Here, put these on and let’s get into it.” Carmen reached into a bag and brought out two pair of pink sunglasses, with lenses shaped like hearts. She put one on and handed the other to Alice. “Control room, music, _s’il vous plait_.”

They sang, belting out _La vie en rose_ , vamping dramatically, grabbing each other and singing, looking into each others eyes like two teenagers in the back seat of a drive-in, pouring out the lyrics together and taking turns, first in French then in English:

> Quand elle me prend dans ses bras When she takes me in her arms
> 
> Elle me parle tout bas, And whispers in my ear  
> Je vois la vie en rose. My rosy hue, my rosy view
> 
> Elle me dit des mots d'amour, She tells me she loves me
> 
> Des mots de tous les jours, The simplest words she knows  
> Et ca me fait quelque chose It thrills and chills me so  
>   
> Elle est entre dans mon Coeur She owns my heart, my soul  
> Une part de bonheur My happiness  
> Dont je connais la cause. Who knows the reasons why  
>    
> C’est te pour elle. Moi pour elle That’s it, she’s the one for me  
> Pour toute nos vies, For all our lives  
> Elle m'a juré pour la vie She’s sworn herself to me  
>   
> Et des que je l'apercois And when she come into my view  
> Alors je sens en moi I can feel inside   
> Mon coeur qui bat My beating heart 

* * *

Carmen checked her e-mail while she waited in Shane’s room for Alice to arrive at the hospital. The monitor was humming along quietly as Shane slept. Physically she was healing very well, the doctors said. She had been removed from the ventilator and was breathing just fine on her own. Her head wound was healing well, at least on the outside. She just wouldn’t wake up, that’s all. Her body had progressed so well they had moved her out of ICU and into a standard room. If she didn’t snap out of the coma in the next week, the doctors said, they were going to transfer her to a long-term convalescent center; the hospital couldn’t keep a bed occupied for what might turn out to be be months and maybe years. The only medical issues they had to deal with were the usual ones for long-term patients: body sores, nutrition, pneumonia, and so on. As for the inside of Shane’s head, no one knew. There could be long-term brain damage, there could be mild impairment. She could be one hundred percent mentally fit as a fiddle. Statistically it was all a crap shoot. For what it was worth, her diagnostics all looked good. She just refused to wake up.

There was an e-mail from Carmen’s cruise ship company. Carmen still had another month of shore leave scheduled before she was supposed to ship out again, but something had come up. A cruise director on one of the around-the-world trips had just discovered she was pregnant, and couldn’t go on her trip. There had been an emergency meeting to re-staff the position, and everyone had been unanimous: Could they get the fabulous DJ La Pica, the Spicy One? It was LA to the Far East, around the Horn of Africa, a run through the Med, then Great Britain and Scandinavia, then Iceland, Greenland, Halifax, down the St. Lawrence and back out, down the East Coast. through the Caribbean. They wouldn’t transit the Panama Canal; instead, they go down to Brazil, then Uruguay, Argentina, around the Horn, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, eventually back to LA. It was 164 days, 31 countries, 54 stops. It was a six-month commitment. She’d have her own reasonably large stateroom, a small office, and of course the cruise director’s staff. The hours would be grueling; that went without saying. But it was the cruise of a lifetime, if you didn’t mind working like a maniac for most of it.

On the other hand, she’d get to see the world. She’d circumnavigate. She’s sail around the Horn. We hate to rush you, blah blah blah, but we need to staff this right away, and if you say no we have to start finding our next candidate, like, yesterday. Can you give us an answer in 24 hours? Sorry, but we really have to move on this. The cruise leaves LA in two weeks.

Alice came in and set down her bag of supplies and goodies she routinely brought, plus a sheaf of flowers to change out. “Hey, babe, anything new? How’s she doing?”

“She’s just ticking along like a Swiss watch. Nothing new medically. If she doesn’t wake up soon they are going to move her to a long-term facility that handles comatose people.”

“Yeah, I figured that was coming sooner or later. I had some discussions with all the lawyers and the hospital people.”

Since Shane had no known living relatives except Shea, and no significant other, no one had medical or other power of attorney for her. There was no one to make medical decisions. Alice and Shane’s lawyer, Bernie McFadden had talked it over with Shane’s business partner, Chase, and with Carmen. They’d have to go to court, but in the end they had all agreed Alice should apply for and receive power-of-attorney, backed up by and in consultation with Bernie and with Chase. There had been brief discussion of Carmen, but Carmen had immediately bowed out, for one thing because she had a career in a different city 450 miles away from LA and was out at sea on a cruise seven to ten months a year. And she insisted she had no other kind of relationship with Shane, anyway. Not now, not ever. She was just an ex, that’s all, and god knows, there had been a lot of them.

“There is some news, though,” Carmen said.

“Yeah? What?”

Carmen handed Alice her cell phone so she could read Carmen’s e-mail from the cruise line.

Alice read it, handed the phone back, and began to unpack her supplies: book, magazines, sodas, snacks, radio scripts she needed to work on, and so on.

“You can’t say no,” Alice said.

“I know.”

“Hand me your phone back.”

Carmen did. Alice tabbed the “Reply” button and typed “I’m in.” She handed the phone back to Carmen. “Hit ‘Send,’” she said.

Carmen read the message. She looked at Alice.

“No,” Alice said. “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, don’t give me that sad, self-pitying look. That torn, don’t-know-what-to-do look. That can’t-decide look. That who-will-take-care-of-Shane look. No.”

Carmen looked at her.

“I’ve got this,” Alice said, gesturing toward Shane. “Hit ‘Send.’”

Carmen looked at Alice, then Shane, then Alice again. Then she hit “Send.”

* * *

“Shane, we have to have a serious talk,” Carmen said. “There’s been a lot of discussion about the hospital needing the bed space and if you don’t wake up soon they are going to move you to some vegetable farm somewhere, where they store brain-dead people in comas. The put you in some of those creepy containers you see in science fiction movies about long-distance space travel, and they pipe Lawrence Welk into the PA system. I know you don’t want that. I’ve already read to you the complete works of J. K. Rowling and Leo Tolstoy, and if you don’t wake up I’m going to have to order Proust from Amazon, and neither of us wants that.

“Of course, the good news is you aren’t brain-dead. They hook up all these wires to your skull and they look inside your head and they put the results up on the monitor. There’s all these squiggly lines and it says your brain is perking right along, no dead spots, no clots, no seizures. Your libido is swollen to the size of a grapefruit, but I told them it was that way since you were 13 years old, so they aren’t too worried about it. Everybody you’ve ever met has been here to visit you. Your business partner, Chase, a lot of the staff at the salons you’ve trained. They say there’s some celebrity twat out there starting to get a little fuzzy and in need of your special, high-priced sugar trim. Bernie, your lawyer, and his assistant have been here. She’s very attractive, I must say, but I don’t think she swings our way. The West Hollywood chapter of the Gay Pride committee has sent a delegation of young, up-and-coming lesbians just now coming of age and who have yet to experience the famous McCutcheon Back Alley Quickie, so that’s now on your to-do list. Word is, Gay LA has gotten pretty horny since you’ve been away, and three women have gone straight, hoping to find an orgasm somewhere in the straight world. Yes, we both know they’ll be disappointed, but that’s how desperate things have gotten. I think they just wanted you to feel guilty.

“Oh, one other thing. I’m leaving in two weeks to sail around the world. I’ll send you a postcard from Mozambique, when we get there. Alice is getting life-or-death power-of-attorney, and she’s going to be living at my place fulltime while I’m gone. So, you know, sleep or wake up, it’s your call.”

* * *

“Shane, you’re really starting to piss me off,” Alice said. “It’s been two weeks. More than two weeks, coming up on three weeks. They say the brain swelling has gone down. They put the bone thingy back in your head. You’re gonna be fine, if you ever wake up. Carmen and Lauren have been married for several years and they have three kids and a dog, and they live happily in Encino running an antiques store. The kids are named Carmie Junior, Alice Junior, and the baby is little Shaney Junior. Okay, none of that’s true, but it will be one day if you don’t wake up. So think about it, you know?”

“Okay, the real thing I wanted to talk to you about was this great idea I had. I want to write a book about Jenny’s murder, and how you, Carmen and Lauren solved it and got me out of jail. I’m going back and forth between a thinly disguised novel, you know, maybe with some names changed, or an actual non-fiction true-crime thing. Right now I’m tending toward the novel, but who knows, I’m looking for an agent, and he or she may decide something else. But anyway, I wanted you to know about it and give me your blessing, and of course I’ll need you and Carmen and Lauren to tell me all the details and stuff. Marybeth told me a lot of it when she got me out of Humboldt, but I need to hear it from you guys, too. My working title is ‘Who Killed Jenny?’ I know, I know, it’s not the greatest title in the world, but ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and ‘In Cold Blood’ were already taken. So was ‘Crime and Punishment.’ I thought about ‘Fifty Shades of Pussy,’ but I think it’s too derivative. And I’m working on the screenplay of it at the same time. What I wanted to ask you was, what did you think of the cast Jenny had for her movie about all of us? I really can’t stomach the idea of Niki Stevens playing Jenny, I know we’ll have to find somebody else, and anyway, Jenny’s character dies right at the beginning, so Niki wouldn’t agree to play it if she only had two minutes of screen time, you know? I never saw any of Jenny’s movie, obviously, or even any of the daily rushes, but what did you think? Did you like Cammie Rodgers, the girl who played you? Did you like Susan Somerville, the girl who was supposed to play me? I always thought Parker Posey should play me. What do you think? Who should we cast for Carmen and Lauren? Sarah Shahi played Carmen in that TV show, but I don’t know if we can get her. You know who I’d just love love love for Lauren? Jessica Biel. Same problems, though, availability and salary. But just think about it. Sarah Shahi and Jessica Biel, with all that lezzie chemistry. O, M, G, I’m creaming my jeans just thinking about them. Okay, my time’s up and I gotta go. Hey, don’t tell Carmen what we talked about. I don’t want her to know just yet. But I just wanted you to know I’m working on the book and the screen treatment, and I need you to wake the fuck up, okay? Okay.”

* * *

Shane opened her eyes about ten minutes after noon on the nineteenth day. She looked up at the ceiling and turned her head slightly left and right. She saw that she was hooked up to some sort of IV, and that there were bags of fluid hanging from a pole just at her right shoulder, and nearby the monitoring device that was adjusting the flow rate of her IV drip. She became aware that she had a tube in her nose, blowing oxygen in. On her left side was a large display monitor with lots of squiggles and lines on it, and she understood that it was displaying her heart rate and other functions. Her lips felt dry. She knew there was no one in the room, and wondered where everybody was. She vaguely remembered the far, far end of a dream, something about a giant black jungle cat, a jaguar, maybe. Then it dissolved and she couldn’t remember what it was.

She tried to remember what had happened, and why she was in a hospital room, but couldn't. She remembered something about going to San Francisco, and she knew she had talked to Carmen. She felt she had something urgent to tell Carmen, but couldn't remember what it was. She wondered if Carmen was still mad at her or would ever forgive her for abandoning her right before they were supposed to be married. She wondered what Carmen had looked like in her wedding dress -- bet she looked like an angel. She was in love with Carmen -- that's what it was she was trying to remember. Had to find her and tell her.

She didn't know why she was in a hospital bed, but she had some sense that it was better to lie there and wait for a doctor or a nurse to come talk to her, rather than try to get up. She wasn't sure she could get up anyway; her body felt stiff and awkward, and that was kind of weird. She became aware that she had bandages on her head, and wondered what that was all about. The more she thought about it, the more she realized she had a headache, one of those dull, achy ones somewhere in the back of your skull. Shane didn't think they put you in the hospital for just a headache. She wondered if she'd slipped in the shower and hit her head, or been in a car accident. If the nurse came in, maybe she'd ask for some Motrin or something. For some reason, she thought of the word "cholera." Could she have caught cholera? She hardly even knew what it was or how you caught it.

She felt weak and sleepy, and she watched the clock on the far wall. She could see that next to the door of her room someone had taped up a big sheet of Manila paper upon which a child had drawn some sort of picture showing a stick figure lying on a bed with a big white turban on her head. Across the bottom she could dimly make out the childish letters that spelled out "I love you Auntie Shane get well love Angelica." Angelica. Yes, she was Tina and Bette's daughter. Her goddaughter. It was coming back to her. Angelica had made her a get-well card. That was sweet. Shane felt she would like to be a parent some day. She remembered somebody telling her she would make a good parent, but she couldn't remember who or where or when. But Carmen, now there's someone who would make a great parent, a great mom. She wondered if Carmen was interested in having children. She would have to ask her. That is, if Carmen was even speaking to her. She hadn't seen Carmen since the disaster in Whistler nearly four years ago.

Shane looked at the ceiling and wondered where she was, LA or San Francisco, or who knows where, but decided it wasn't all that important. She felt tired, and closed her eyes.

* * *

Carmen walked down the corridor past the nurse's station, engrossed in an article in the new issue of _Rolling Stone_ that she'd just bought in the hospital gift shop. In her other hand she carried a fountain soda she had with her lunch, which she'd just eaten in the hospital cafeteria. She'd spent most of the morning at the hospital, talking to Shane and reading to her from a novel she thought Shane might have liked, _Love in the Time of Cholera_. She sipped from the straw in the top of the of the disposable soda cup as she walked. It was two minutes past 1 p.m.

Carmen entered Shane's room and glanced at Shane momentarily, and at the monitor, and didn't recognize any kind of change. She sat down in the chair next to the bed and was deciding which article in _Rolling Stone_ to start reading aloud to Shane, when Shane said, "How long does it take you to eat lunch? You've been gone nearly an hour."

"JESUS CHRIST, SHANE!" Carmen yelled. Shane had so startled her that she'd dropped her soda cup in her lap, scattering diet Coke and crushed ice all over herself, some of it splattering Shane, too. Carmen lurched to her feet and ignored the soda entirely, crying and blubbering, and threw herself on top of Shane, grasping Shane's face gently in her hands and kissing her face everywhere, kissing Shane's mouth, crying and kissing and laughing, kissing Shane just as Shane wanted to be kissed, and two nurses came in from the nurse's station to see what all the commotion was about.

(The End)


End file.
